This wasn’t just any big win, it was the big win.
“We hit the home run,” said race horse breeder Bob Baffert. “We finally hit it after all these years.”
Misremembered, a 4-year-old race horse owned by George Jacobs, proprietor of La Cañada landmark Georgee’s Pizza, and a small ownership group of friends, won the 73rd annual Santa Anita Big Handicap and its $750,000 prize money on Saturday.
I’m in shock,” Jacobs said. “[Misremembered] wowed everyone.”
In 1998, Jacobs got in on a horse with former Major League Baseball pitcher Matt Young, a La Cañada resident and St. Francis grad, and Baffert, a horse trainer and breeder at Santa Anita for the last 40 years. A horse named Shot of Gold that both Baffert and Jacobs described as a better-than-average horse, but nothing special.
They worked together for years, winning here and there, and five years ago, Baffert came forward with a mare that had a few good sires.
“The mare was 18 years old, she was a stakes winner and she was a very good mare,” said Baffert, who’s also trained a few winners of the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes and Preakness Stakes, like Point Given and a few others. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna buy her and breed with her and get one good horse out of her.’
“And we did.”
Baffert went to lunch at Georgee’s one day and told Jacobs about the mare and the plans to sire. Jacobs immediately wanted in.
From the mare came this horse, Misremembered, named after Roger Clemens’ malaprop in his testimony on Capitol Hill about HGH and steroid use.
“I saw the testimony and I said to Bob, ‘that’s a horse’s name,’” Jacobs said.
Jacobs added that the way to remember the name is very simple: If you don’t remember it, then that’s how you remember it.
Young and Baffert’s wife, Jill, jumped on board to finance the horse.
Things started off slowly and the horse wasn’t quite as good as was hoped when Misremembered started to mature.
“At the beginning of the year, he was an ugly duckling,” Baffert said. “Then he turned into this big horse—first time I laid eyes on him, I was disappointed [he wasn’t larger]. He’s changed so much and he’s turned into quite a horse.”
