Friday Fun: Seattle Slew, Foolish Pleasure and the Real Reason Sandy Hawley Had Long Hair

On a recent shopping trip with the lovely Amy I made some excellent horse racing related discoveries and ended up leaving the antique sale with a slew of used miracles. Earlier this week I posted a story using a May 18, 1946 Belmont Park program found at this sale as my prop.

Today's posting will recap some of the other special historical items starting with the awesome game of Steeplechase! Yes, this gameboard comes complete with gameboard and instructions. The instructions are neatly printed directly on the gameboard! oooh!

The rules are simple enough. Roll a dice and if your gamepiece (not included) lands on 9, 32 or 53 then you are deemed to have stumbled and must remain until all others have passed. I hereby submit the following phrase for a stopped horse, "Flying Private just rolled a nine!"



Sports Illustrated, June 20th 1977 celebrates the only undefeated Triple Crown winner in history. I think Mr. Ernie Munick would approve of this purchase. I wouldn't be surprised to find Ernie somewhere in the background of one of the photos!




William Leggett writes the story recapping a crowd of 70,229 fans cheering Seattle Slew to victory in a wire-to-wire performance.

Douglas Looney contributes a behind-the-scenes trip through the backstretch focusing on the goings on at Stall 2, Barn 54 at Belmont Park - the home of Seattle Slew. No doubt this piece should be re-written in 2010 by Brooklyn Backstretch as she tails our next Triple Crown winner.




Sitting right behind Seattle Slew in the box of magazines was the Kentucky Derby special edition of Sports Illustrated featuring Foolish Pleasure. The inside caption reads, "Threading his way through a jumbled field, Foolish Pleasure won the 101st Derby."



Val (of the brilliant Foolish Pleasure blog) - if you're reading this posting, it would be my pleasure to post this magazine out to you



And now for an advertising interlude brought to you by the craving for nicotine! Sports Illustrated is littered with smoking advertisements and people in the 1970s were seriously deluded with regard to the power of the puff.

Smoking: It will make you a cowboy!


Alright, this one has nothing to do with smoking...but exactly why do I want to have cat feet? I wish they had used a litter box in the ad. The geniuses behind this ad were smoking more than just cigarettes.


Smoking: It'll put hair on your lip.


Smoking: We couldn't afford photography so we wrote an endlessly long advertisement trying to con you into smoking our product. I mean, really, please...would you have a smoke? Just one little drag? All the other kids are doing it...


These guys get straight to the point - Smoking: C'mon!!!! C'mon! Who can argue with that?


Smoking: If we smoked the other brand of cigarettes we could ride the horse.


Smoking: What a bunch of D.B's we are.



Alright, enough with 1970s smoking propaganda. Here's an awesome cover shot of Sandy Hawley in the Globe and Mail Weekend Magazine from April 20, 1974. The story talks about Hawley riding seven days a week, nine times a day while commuting back and forth between Toronto and Maryland. No wonder he didn't have time for a haircut.



The inside coverage details how Hawley set a Laurel Race Course record in 1973 smashing over 500 wins in one season. Sandy Hawley is an absolute legend in the game of racing. Canada's most under-rated athlete by far.

The back of the Globe and Mail Magazine had an unfortunate back page advertisement considering my next find.



It's the brilliant Johnny Longden on the cover of the Windsor Star Weekend Magazine from October 23, 1965. 'Mud, money and 6,000 winners' screams the cover.


The inside story features Longden's 6,00th winner in a race run at Vancouver's Exhibition Park. The story states that Longden has, "won more than 6,000 purses - more than 1,000 up on Willie Shoemaker, his closest rival. And he rode his first year four years before Shoemaker was born."



Longden gets a big kiss from his wife Hazel. There's mud in your eye!


All in all, not a bad day of shopping. It's finds like this that get me pouring through old books and researching racing history. There are so many stories out there that can be told and re-told. I love collecting all this old memorabilia and being reminded of the little details that would otherwise get lost in the cracks.


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*I'm in Kentucky this weekend so if you're at Chubrchill Downs and see a pale Canadian kid betting "exactors" and snapping off hundreds of photos come on over and say hello.