John Pricci

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The Hall of Fame nominations ballot arrived in the mail last week. Is it that time already? Can Eclipse Award ballots be far behind?

The answers are yes and no, like the entire process itself. So many worthy nominees; so little time to get them all in at once.

My first inclination was to not add to an already worthy list. The Hall of Fame rule is that horses and horsemen nominated but not elected in the past three years automatically return on next year’s ballot.

That‘s entirely fair. If you made the cut once but failed to enter, try, try and try again. There are no losers on the list. It’s the reason why all those TV award-show presenters say: “And the Fill-In- The-Award-Here Goes To ….”

In that spirit, I wasn’t going to add to the existing lists.

Many worthy nominees return
To varying degrees, aren’t jockeys Eddie Maple, Craig Perret, Randy Romero and Alex Solis worthy of induction to the Hall?

How’d you like a horse trained by Dale Baird or Gary Jones or Mel Stute or Robert Wheeler? Me, too.

Were you not entertained by the performances of Best Pal and Housebuster and Lure and Manila?

Don’t you like mares that shave, such as Inside Information, Silverbulletday, Open Mind and Sky Beauty?

That’s enough to consider, enough to make a horse-lover’s head hurt.

So how do you choose between Maple, a winner of nearly 4,400 races, and Craig Perret, a winner of exactly that number, many “by appointment only?”

Or were Romero’s rides on Go for Wand and the pressure of Personal Ensign’s winning streak, ending with that indelible Breeders’ Cup victory over Derby heroine Winning Colors, good enough to seal the deal? How about Alex Solis’s work on Classic/Dubai World Cup winner Pleasantly Perfect. Snow Chief, too. Either way, no argument.

The great trainers are always hardest for me to separate. How is the winner of 9,418 races through last October not in the Hall of Fame?

And I don’t care if Dale Baird saddled all of them in my back yard.

They count!

Gary Jones? He was 18 percent effective in stakes company, the developer of Turkoman and Best Pal and Quiet American. Quiet American?

He won the Cigar Mile when it was the NYRA Mile, in 1990.

Wheeler's forgotten handiwork
Everybody remembers Stute’s work with Snow Chief, but how soon we forget Bobby Wheeler, if we ever knew him. In 1960, when C.V. Whitney was America’s leading owner, it was Wheeler who won tons of stakes money with Tompion and the fillies Silver Spoon and Bug Brush.

Bug Brush? She set a world record beating males in the San Antonio.

Wheeler won 18 stakes with those two fillies that year. And when racing began to grade its stakes in 1976, Wheeler won 25 percent of those he entered. No wonder Greentree and Nelson Bunker Hunt hired him, too.

That would make him a sort of back-in-the-day Pletcher. Todd Pletcher?

With current earnings of over $138-million, fourth all-time, he’s not eligible until 2020. .

The horses? Best Pal: 18-for-47, 17 stakes, Big Cap, Hollywood Gold Cup, Oaklawn Handicap; $5.6-million. Turf specialist Manila: 12-for- 18; Arlington Million, United Nations, Turf Classic, Breeders’ Cup Turf over Theatrical, Estrapade and European champion Dancing Brave;

$2.6 million. Silver Charm: 12-for-24, 11 graded stakes, Derby, Preakness, Dubai World Cup (Swain, by a nose); $6.9-million.

And the girls? Inside Information: 14-for-17, nine stakes (six Grade 1), wins over Heavenly Prize, Sky Beauty and Serena’s Song. Sky Beauty: 15-for-21, NYRA Triple Tiara, Alabama, the Ruffian (130 pounds). Silverbulletday: 15-for-23, 14 of first 16; $3-million; Juvenile Fillies, Ashland, Kentucky Oaks, Alabama.

So I’m thinking this is easy. Plenty to think about already. How impertinent to add more names to those lists.

Parenthetically, what if Midnight Lute does win Saturday’s Cigar Mile? Does he upset Lawyer Ron, the pro tem handicap champion? Excuse the digression.

In their zeal to make the process easier, the Hall of Fame people made it harder. By providing more information to nominators, a Top 100 list of trainers, jockeys, and horses, both active and inactive, the committee made the decision process harder.

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