A Ticket to Green Pastures

By Tom Callahan

Devil's Bag, the next Secretariat, is syndicated for $36 million

In horse racing, the pikers bet at the windows. The plungers invest in the unborn offspring of untested virgins, whose sex lives are not the only adventures ahead of them. Last week Devil's Bag, a two-year-old object of unprecedented affection, began lining up female companionship for early 1985, charging $1 million for an annual date. Even in the outlandish economy of Thoroughbred racing, where one yearling colt sold last July for $10.2 million, this is impressive. Eleven years ago, when Secretariat was a two-year-old of brilliant promise, his future favors were parceled out at an unheard-of $190,000 a share. But the stunning news is not that Devil's Bag will be more exclusive than Secretariat. He just might be better.

Granted, hardboots can be sentimental about a horse on the lead, and recent misfortunes may be spurring their hopes. It seems that every potential champion of late--Timely Writer, Landaluce, Roving Boy--has become a casualty, if not a fatality. But the dream is alive in Devil's Bag, who in his five starts, the past three of them stakes, has yet to trail any horse at any pole. Racing purely within himself, for he has never felt a whip, Devil's Bag won the Cowdin in stakes-record time for seven furlongs, and the Champagne in stakes-record time for a mile, both at Belmont in New York. At the Laurel Futurity in Maryland, without even trying, he sped 1 1/16 in 1:42 1/5, three-fifths of a second over Spectacular Bid's track record.

Devil's Bag would have concluded his shiny season last month in the Remsen Stakes at New York's Aqueduct, but he stepped on a stone and cautiously called it a year. He will winter at Hialeah and prepare for the Florida races, pointing to the Kentucky Derby in May and the Triple Crown glories ahead. The holders of the syndicate's 26 paid shares, whose $26 million buys the right to breed 26 mares a season, will also participate in the expenses, the spoils and the risks next year before Devil's Bag goes to stud at Kentucky's Claiborne Farm.

Consider the perils, just the odds on getting a horse to the Derby post. If he stays sound in training, will he be lucky in traffic? And whatever he achieves at the track is no guarantee of success in the breeding shed. Secretariat was the supreme race horse, but on the dollar list stands 24th among leading active sires and is not in the top 60 this year. For those who play with bloodlines, the stock market must seem boring.

Ten other syndicate shares were reserved by the former owner of Devil's Bag, James P. Mills of Hickory Tree Stable in Middleburg, Va., so it is a $36 million transaction, all told. Conquistador Cielo, that monstrous comet of 1982, may have considered the $910,000 he had been drawing per client to be a lot. It is said in England that the stallion Shareef Dancer gets $1 million. Well, if so, he has been matched by a juvenile. Mills' wife Alice discovered Devil's Bag at Windfields Farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where he was bred, the relatively humble son of Halo, in the more elegant company of many junior Native Dancers. The price was good ($325,000), but the timing was spectacular. After one of Halo's boys, Sunny's Halo, took this year's Kentucky Derby, the value of a full brother of Devil's Bag leaped to $1 million. Halo's stud fees have soared from $30,000 to $100,000.

The unglamorous name Devil's Bag comes from a TV adaptation of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and refers to an enchanted sack whose magic, when doubted by a teacher, wrought fiery destruction on the schoolhouse. According to Trainer Woody Stephens, 70, a cut-down Ichabod Crane in a brown fedora, the name does not suit the horse. "He has an awful sweet disposition," says Stephens, who admittedly is hard-pressed to find anything unadmirable about a horse. "When he trains in the morning, he comes back happy, eats at the hayrack and actually lies down for a bit. The really relaxed ones will do that." Woody has been observing horses' habits since his father took him off a mule and put him on a pony to country school in Midway, Ky. At 14 he left home to be a jockey, but grew to be a trainer of stature. It was Woody who took the gimpy Conquistador and, over six wild days, followed the fastest mile in the history of New York, the Metropolitan Handicap, with one of the most rousing Belmont Stakes.

While Stephens has won each of the Triple Crown jewels separately, it is not the same as taking them all at once. Though he professes to love his charges equally, his voice lifts when discussing Devil's Bag: "He was being broke the first time I saw him, good-looking but one of several. I started to breeze him that February, but I didn't know until May. He was going along with a bunch of others, but so much easier. I thought: 'This colt's a natural runner.'" He's a showy dude, deep brown with a white-stripe blaze. "A masculine horse with a little bit of tummy on him," Woody says. "All man," agrees Rider Eddie Maple, who has tapped Devil's Bag on the shoulder but never whapped him on the rump. "He's broad and he's got those big old eyes," Maple says. "You don't see them that often."

Next week the Horse of the Year will be proclaimed by the Daily Racing Form, the National Turf Writers and the Thoroughbred Racing Associations. It is a three-horse race: the Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Slew O'Gold, the French filly All Along and Devil's Bag. Only Secretariat ever won it at two, when the older candidates were weaker. So some voters may insist on seeing Devil's Bag challenged first. "Some day we're going to have to call on him," says Stephens, "and you'll see a horse who'll fight back." As it happens, the second most impressive two-year-old, Swale, is another pupil of Woody's. The thought of two such talents in one barn is taking people back to Calumet days 35 years ago, to Citation and Coaltown, names like plucked strings, back when horses made love for a song.

--By Tom Callahan