Beneath a nearly perfect November night sky in 1964, unseasonably cool with only the hint of a breeze, the workers along Laurel Race Track’s backstretch milled about, relaxed, and performed small tasks much as any other night. But at around 9:20 p.m. the stillness and bliss of the evening was shattered as plumes of black smoke billowed into the inky night sky.
Sparks and flames leapt from Barn 21, a calamitous sight since the barn was an old-fashioned wooden structure with sixty stalls and more than fifty horses packed into it. In an instant, everything was pandemonium as a life and death drama played out right before the eyes of the grooms and other workers. Leaping up to meet their duty to their employers and to save the animals, they braved blistering temperatures and the blinding, choking smoke to free the huge horses who were now wild with fear.
But as they frantically labored to save equine lives, the workers set in motion an even more chaotic scene. Set free from their constraints, the terrified 1,200-pound animals reared and ran in utterly random paths. In the darkness of the night they crossed and collided at full speed and found each other in sickening thuds. In trying to save their own lives, many of the horses found death, not by smoke or fire but in the blunt-force trauma of their collisions.
Barn 21 was a crude structure dating back to World War II. In addition to the horses, it housed abundant supplies of hay and straw, natural accelerants, and heat generators, which efficiently fed the fire.
In the cool, breezy night it took less than an hour for the entire structure to be consumed.
But that was far from the worst of it. The next morning, when the smoke had finally cleared, it was apparent that thirty-four horses had lost their lives. Their carcasses still littered the Laurel grounds, polluting the usually bucolic atmosphere with the grim sights and revolting stench of death.
John D. Schapiro, the track president, offered no explanations for what had happened or why. He fumbled, instead, to cover his own ass. He made it clear that he knew nothing about the fire’s origins, yet he could assure everyone that he wasn’t the one to blame.
Was faulty wiring the cause? An errant cigarette? Or was it the most dreaded possibility of all—arson? No one knew, Schapiro said but added, “All possible precaution was taken before the unfortunate fire.”
While everyone tried to square Schapiro’s assertion with the horrific scene still smoldering all around—including the horrific site of the charred and distorted bodies being dragged away by tractors—there seemed to be a lack of concern for the future safety of the animals and workers. In his rush to exonerate himself, Schapiro didn’t mention anything about the corrective measures Laurel planned to take to prevent similar tragedies from unfolding again in the future.
The one thing that seemed clear was also quite curious. The fire had affected one man like no other. The likable young trainer, Grover Delp, then in his early thirties and known to everyone by the friendly moniker “Buddy,” owned thirty-two of the thirty-four deceased horses. In those few frightening hours he had lost almost his entire stable.
It was almost as if the fiery finger of God had reached out to smite just one blameless young man while sparing all others. It was an assault from above on one individual that in its vengeful ferocity and precision might have been inscribed in the Book of Job.
But unlike the troubled man from Uz, Buddy wasted no time mourning his dead or bemoaning his fate. Without self-pity or, interestingly, any stated sentiment, sadness, or regret for the fallen animals he’d spent years training, he was back at work in less than a day.
With the poisonous vapors still rising from the earth beneath his feet, Buddy confidently walked away from his past and went to that day’s claiming races to begin the long process of replenishing his stock. At a claiming race, all the entrants are for sale, usually at a reasonable price. Many a frugal racing operation had been built on the cheap with “claimers,” though the quality of the horses is generally considered low.
Only eighteen hours after the fire Delp purchased two horses, Brummel and C’est Sufie. Within three days, he had claimed nine new horses, and for better or worse he was back in business.
The other trainers lined up to kick him while he was down. Speaking anonymously to the press, they said that Buddy was “moving too fast” and that he was bound to “make a lot of bad claims.” But Delp, who had already formed a reputation as a young comer, was at his most brilliant and proved them all wrong. Only a month later three horses he had acquired right after the fire won at Pimlico on the same day. By the end of the season, Buddy boasted ninety victories and, more than that, the overall-victory crown for Maryland trainers in 1964.
It was an unimaginable achievement. There was nothing comparable to it in the annals of American sports. It would be as if an airliner had blown up with an entire big league baseball team aboard, yet the franchise won the World Series anyway with Minor Leaguers filling the big league players’ shoes.
In 1965 Delp would have an even more amazing year. Starting virtually from scratch with his new stable of castoffs, he hit the winner’s circle ninety-eight times and once again topped the state in victories.
Right before the eyes of the fans and the press, a legend was born.
Buddy Delp knew something about bouncing back from tragedy. He grew up in rural Harford County, Maryland, about forty-five minutes due north of Baltimore. His perfectly healthy young father died when he drowned while swimming at a summertime family party. Buddy was only three years old then. His bereaved mother was suddenly alone, left to raise Buddy and his brother, Richard, all by herself. It would take six years before she would marry again, but when she did, it was to the successful Maryland horse trainer Raymond Archer. Archer was a strictly local guy, but he was well known and respected throughout the state, where he had been a consistent winner over many decades.
In all the years that he was growing up, Buddy had little to do with the horse business. In 1952, after high school, he was drafted into the service. The Korean War was on, but Buddy missed the Asian theater, and went to Italy instead, where he never saw any combat. When he got back home, Buddy enrolled at the University of Maryland and studied business, but only long enough to know that college wasn’t for him. So in 1955, while he was still in his early twenties and with nothing else to do, he went to work for Archer.
Although Buddy hadn’t really grown up in racing, it was quickly apparent that he had a talent for organization. He was officially listed as Archer’s assistant trainer, but it wasn’t long before he was in fact running the entire operation while his stepfather relaxed and took it easy. Archer enjoyed that Buddy was handling his affairs so competently. The old man took to coming in only in the afternoons. Eventually, he only showed up one day a week, and that was payday.
Despite Buddy’s hard work and aptitude, he soon found himself struggling financially. Driving the horses as well as training them, he took an alarm clock with him on the road so he could sleep on the turnpike shoulder instead of staying in an expensive hotel. His money was so tight that he had to calculate precisely to make sure he could afford a greasy burger and gasoline on the trip.
Buddy soon grew tired of his arrangement with Archer. He went to his stepfather and told Archer that if he was to continue working for him, he needed to earn a little more. Raymond sized him up coldly. “When are you leaving?” he asked Buddy. It was a cruel blow, but the truth was that Buddy was so adept, he didn’t need Archer anymore. He knew the best people to hire, and he knew how to run every aspect of the business.
Forced to move on, Buddy started his own operation, which was quickly populated by an expert staff. His payroll included an assistant trainer, a foreman, a traveling foreman, exercise riders, pony people, grooms, hot walkers, and a night watchman. He also had a Rolodex brimming with excellent independent contractors such as jockeys, blacksmiths, veterinarians, equine dentists, and even massage therapists for the horses.
Buddy also displayed an admirable generosity—or nepotism, depending on how you wanted to look at it. He rescued his brother, Dick, from the dead-end job of driving a clanking milk truck and gave him the unearned title of assistant trainer. Dick was quickly his number two man, though at that time the little brother had almost no formal training in horse work.
Young Buddy Delp was about 6 feet tall and self-assured. He was a little portly and preternaturally bald, with a swooping rim of black hair traveling from ear to ear around the sides and dipping into a cul-de-sac at the back of his neck. None of this seemed to bother Buddy very much. He never covered up or combed over a thing. He simply and unashamedly let the world see his fat belly and his denuded, salmon-colored head, as if to say, “I’m still a damn site better than you are.” He wore old-fashioned black horn-rimmed eyeglasses—perhaps as a way of showing the world how unaffected and intellectual he was—loud sport coats, shined-up patent leather shoes, and a hound’s tooth fedora in the manner of the gruff Alabama football coach Bear Bryant.
Buddy’s comical appearance didn’t prevent him from projecting power and control. He appeared every inch like the swaggering man in charge that he was. His composure in the face of the catastrophic events at Laurel had earned him the lasting respect of the fans and virtually everyone in the sporting press. And he handled the adulation with a great deal of humility and dignity.
Buddy gave the lion’s share of credit for his miraculous comeback to the various horse owners who employed him. They were the heroes, he noted, the ones who believed in him and quickly put up the cash to back his resurrection.
Buddy was by no means self-deprecating, but he was not yet self-aggrandizing either. “My theories on training don’t differ from [those of] most other men,” he reasonably said. “If a horse is eating well and feeling well he should run well—providing he is in the proper company and not entered over his head.”
That statement offered a rare glimpse behind Delp’s magic screen. His terrific success was based in part on a mild deception. As often as he could, he matched his talented horses against inferior competitors. “Surround yourself with people [who have] money and keep your horses in the cheapest company and you’ll win a ton of races,” Buddy preached in private.
That practice led to a circle of success. Rich owners acquired higher-quality horses. Good horses matched against second-class competitors led to happy owners. And happy owners brought more horses for training.
“Most people in the horse business made their money elsewhere [away from racing],” Buddy’s second son, Gerald, remembered. “They got into the horse business because they love[d] the sport. What they wanted to do was win, not necessarily turn a profit.”
“I train for people that can afford the game,” Buddy said. “But I don’t want to train for an SOB that says, ‘Here’s $10,000; make me some money.’ I want him to say, ‘Here’s $10,000; let’s have some fun.’” Gerald, unschooled in everything but the intricacies of the track, said, “Them people with money, they wanted to win, bring their friends out, get their pictures taken. My father knew how to play the game.”
There was no doubt about that. Delp was a consistent winner for decades in all kinds of conditions and locations. He was hands on and involved.
Cathy Rosenberger worked for Delp throughout the 1970s. Cathy was petite. She was about 5 feet 6 inches and 115 muscular pounds, fresh-faced with brown hair, green eyes, freckled skin, and a delicately constructed nose. Despite her small stature she was a no-nonsense and highly focused horse professional. Cathy grew up on a small family farm in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, where she discovered her life’s passion when she was only fourteen. That was the year she started riding.
As she became more deeply involved in the profession, she did just about any job a person in the horse industry could do. She participated in horse shows and hunts. She groomed and she galloped, she raced in relays (once as part of an undefeated team), and she judged races. Cathy married a blacksmith, and the two managed their own horse farm. She obtained her first trainer’s license in 1968, and she was eventually licensed in four states—Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
Cathy’s job title with the Delp organization was “pony girl,” someone who rode calm, well-trained horses that lead the thoroughbreds out to exercise and, at the races, to the starter’s gate. She closely observed Delp over a number of years and saw him as a manager who tended to business well. “If he wasn’t out watching the horses himself,” she said, “he would always ask us back in the barn, ‘How did it go?’ He was always trying to get clues as to a horse’s energy, enthusiasm, and how tough he was to gallop.”
That information guided Buddy, and he used it to best instruct the staff in handling a horse. “[Delp] trained at the barn,” Cathy said. “As the horses came around to go out to the track to exercise, he would walk over and maybe pat a horse and then run his hand down its knees and ankles to check for swelling or heat. Then he would tell the rider what to do: ‘Gallop one mile [or] gallop two miles or breeze this horse a half mile today.’”
But in Cathy’s experience the Delp organization didn’t always show sound judgment. Buddy and Dick sometimes overlooked the advice of their staff. In one instance Rosenberger (then in her early thirties) and her pony led a strong young horse named DeBerry’s Ticket out to gallop. Normally, she could hardly hold that strong and energetic horse. But on this particular day she noticed that he was sluggish. She practically had to drag him around the racetrack. That was a sign pointing to the probability that the horse was unwell. So when she got back to the barn, she reported her concern to Dick. “There is something really wrong with this horse,” she told him.
But Dick Delp, the former milk truck driver, was her boss, and her opinion meant little to him. When she said that she thought the horse was a little off, Dick didn’t pick up the phone and call the vet; he argued with her.
“I don’t think this horse is well,” Cathy repeated.
“Well, he ate up,” Dick responded.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just know there is something wrong with the horse. His eyes are cloudy, and he’s lethargic.”
As it turned out, the animal had an inner-ear infection. Because he wasn’t treated promptly, the infection traveled into his brain. The horse had to be sent away. He almost died but eventually recovered and was claimed by a different trainer.
In general, Buddy Delp’s philosophy was to drive his animals hard. His tough-it-out regimen would be considered imprudent by latter-day trainers, but even in his own unenlightened day, some believed that he pushed his horses too far. “When we got a good horse that was working well, had breeding and lots of background so that the potential was there, Buddy would start overtraining and really push,” Rosenberger said. “In some ways he went back to old-school training; think of Seabiscuit. [The trainers] would race [the horses], and then four days later they would race [them] again. Now, if a trainer did that, they would send him to the nuthouse,” she said.
This overwork took a physical toll on the horses, of course, but it also preyed on their psychology. The most poignant case was What A Summer, a talented filly from the mid-1970s. She was a fast runner with a knack for victory but a delicate equilibrium. What A Summer was a tightly wound horse, something recognized by both the exercise rider and the pony girl, but minimized by Buddy. He heard them when they said the horse was high strung but didn’t really listen. Despite their warnings, he never changed his hard-assed approach.
In fact, instead of catering to What A Summer’s quirks, Buddy ratcheted up the pressure on her. “She was a sprint horse, and she was getting crazier by the day,” Rosenberger remembered. “But he just kept pushing her and pushing her.”
Finally, with the tension increasing daily, What A Summer snapped. One morning during a half-mile breeze, she suddenly bolted across the Laurel track. Exercise rider Lyn Raymond was powerless to control her. The crazed horse galloped to the outside fence and didn’t stop until she had rammed the barrier. Raymond was thrown as though she had been vaulted through the windshield in a car wreck. She went over the fence and landed hard in a concrete drainage ditch on the other side.
Rosenberger looked on in horror. She ran over to help her friend and saw her lying lifelessly in the ravine. Cathy thought that Raymond was dead. She wasn’t moving, and her eyes had rolled back into her head. Track workers rushed to her aid, found she was breathing, and called an ambulance.
After it was all over, Buddy walked out to examine the scene of the tragedy. He found Lyn’s hard protective helmet still lying on the ground. He stooped down, picked it up by the strap, and went back to the barn with it. Inside he walked deliberately to What A Summer’s stall and, still holding the helmet by its strap, whipped her over and over with the hard shell.
What A Summer’s owner, Milton Polinger, soon passed away, and the horse was put up for auction. It was purchased by Diana Firestone and so moved on from Buddy Delp’s stable to the renowned trainer LeRoy Jolley. The change did wonders for her. Under Jolley, What A Summer was named Maryland-Bred Horse of the Year and Champion Older Mare two times.
Delp’s view of the horses, no matter how good they were, was unsentimental and simple. They had to win. He understood that they were living beings with the ability to feel pain, but all of that was subordinated by his need to earn a living. Buddy was focused on his own success, and he had no pity for the animals if their problems stood in his way. The pressure for victory was great and led to some cruel and even illegal training methods.
Cathy found this out when “Mo” Hall, Buddy’s top groom, approached her and asked her to pick up supplies for him at the local Southern States store. “I need some horse feed,” he told her. And then, handing her an extra twenty-dollar bill, he made an unusual request: “Also, I want you to pick up an electric cattle prod for me,” he told her.
Cathy didn’t know why Mo would want one, but to her it was no big deal. She had seen them in use before, once while watching ranch hands move cattle along. It was a simple instrument, nothing more than a long metal tube with six “C” batteries inside of it for power. When the cattle, with their thick hides, were struck by the prod, they barely reacted to the jolts.
But when Rosenberger brought the device back to Buddy’s operation, she was horrified to see Mo use the instrument on the thoroughbreds. Operating surreptitiously in the privacy of the stalls, he held the horses by their bridles with his right hand and with his left shocked them on their withers.
The horses took it far differently than the cows had. Cathy saw the electrical charges surge through the thoroughbreds. They jumped violently at the jolts and slammed their huge bodies and heads against the walls. The object of the brutal practice was to awaken the horses’ senses and make them run faster when they got out on the track.
The practice was more than just cruel; it was highly illegal. If discovered, it would have resulted in a permanent ban for whoever was deemed responsible. Buddy knew this and insulated himself from any potential accusation or consequences. The word around the barn was that he had made a deal with Mo. The groom handled the cattle prod. If he was ever caught and ruled off for the infraction, it was said that Buddy would provide him a solid income for the rest of his life. The main thing was that Mo keep his mouth shut so that the practice was never traced back to Delp.
All of this was invisible to the press and fans. To them, Buddy was a survivor and a winner. He was an admirable figure and good copy. That was all they knew or cared to know.
But the life could be as hard on Buddy as it was on his horses. For one thing, his wife struggled with mental illness and eventually left him and their two young sons, Doug and Gerald, behind. Buddy, like his mother before him, had to deal with the strains and stresses of being a single parent. By all appearances he did a yeoman’s job of it. Even without his wife, he kept his family intact and looked after his boys himself. His career success afforded them all a handsome home and a comfortable life. As Buddy became more successful and affluent, he could afford the luxuries. In contrast to the Franklins’ home back in Dundalk, where they struggled to find enough bedrooms, his house had ample sleeping space and even a large, well-appointed game room.
Buddy lived in Laurel’s best neighborhood, Hillandale, not far from the track, where his neighbors included respectable figures such as Judge Audrey Melbourne and her husband, Pete Melbourne, a real estate broker. The Melbournes owned thoroughbreds that were trained by Delp. The well-known jockey Bill Passmore also lived close by, and the community was filled with many successful professional people.
Despite the outward appearance of a family coping in adverse circumstances, the Delps were an unorthodox unit. Buddy’s single-minded zeal for his work made him ill equipped to oversee young boys on a full-time basis. Because his ambitions revolved around the track, his sons inevitably spent most of their time there too. This came at the expense of conventional childhood activities like sports and friendships.
The Delp boys spent their days conversing with jockeys, examining horseflesh, and discussing wagers and long shots. Gerald, the younger and therefore the more impressionable, took on the qualities of a railbird, something one of his fourth-grade classmates noticed.
“How was school today?” the boy’s father asked him over the dinner table.
“Good!” he said. “Gerald had a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket.”
By the time he was fourteen, Gerald had saved enough of those bills to pay $3,000 for his own racehorse, Cocktail Ange. Gerald’s horse had more advantages than most others since it was trained by Buddy and ridden by Chris McCarron. Both were future Hall of Famers.
Gerald’s brother, Doug Delp, apparently required more horsepower than Gerald did. He owned a Pontiac Firebird while he was still just a teenager. He used his hotrod to aggravate the grooms and horses. He’d loudly rev his engine in close proximity to the barn and then make swooping circles in the dirt with it—called donuts—near the stable area.
Most kids might have seen the track as a fun diversion from their regular lives (if their parents even allowed them to go there), but for Gerald the excitement and easy cash became an obsession. He eventually lost all interest in other activities, especially school. At age fifteen he simply refused to go to class anymore, and with the knowledge, if not the blessing, of his father, he quit school for good.
Years later Gerald reflected on how Buddy had raised him. “Was it an ideal household? Heeeeellll no,” he said, drawling out the answer to his own question. “My father did the best he could with what he had.”
Buddy’s brand of fatherhood extended beyond his own boys; he eventually, reluctantly, became the mentor to a string of young jockeys. On the surface his impulse to tutor these boys was noble and altruistic. The reporters certainly saw it that way. They presented it as the story of a successful expert at midlife passing on his knowledge and experience to eager young men hungering for opportunity. And yet, without exception, these forays all ended poorly.
For years Delp had claimed that training jockeys wasn’t worth his time. “I don’t like to make riders,” he’d say. “There are always good ones around already made.”
But Buddy relaxed that rule for the first time in the late 1960s, when Kitty Moon, a friend of his and the secretary to the stewards at Laurel Race Track, told him all about her girlfriend’s son, George Cusimano. He was fifteen years old, she said, and his dream was to be a jockey. Cusimano’s father had also been a rider, but the old man wasn’t there to show him the ropes. The old man had left the family cold when George was still very young, and he rarely ever came back around.
Delp accepted Cusimano as a protégé, a favor, as he often said, to Kitty. The kid, Buddy said, “knew nothing about riding when he arrived.” So for two years George mucked stalls, walked horses, cleaned the tack, and rubbed down the animals. After years of this, Buddy made George an exercise rider. And then, finally, the kid became an apprentice jockey.
When George turned seventeen, Buddy felt that he was ready for real race riding. And he was. George rode his first winner in late December 1967, at Laurel. In 1968 George was the leading apprentice jockey in the United States. That same year he made history at Delaware Park when he rode six winners in a single day. All told, Cusimano won 290 races in 1968 and brought home more purse money than any apprentice in history to that point.
Although Buddy was described as George’s “father figure”—a characterization that the trainer embraced—the arrangement wasn’t really close to that. The fallacy was borne out by the fact that George and Buddy dated the same woman, Regina. She started out as Cusimano’s girlfriend but ended up as the second Mrs. Delp.
It was an era when many young men Cusimano’s age were drafted into the service and sent to Vietnam. George was spared that horrifying obligation by the same virtues that made him a successful rider. At nineteen he was only ninety-four pounds. The army gave him a six-month deferment so that he had “time to grow.”
Cusimano never went to Vietnam. He continued as a contract rider for Delp and later as an independent jockey. In his early, successful years, he was highly respected, and Delp often praised him liberally. He compared the young rider’s hand work to that of highly respected veterans with national reputations like Angel Cordero Jr. and Jorge Velasquez. He also spoke of Cusimano’s fearlessness in willing to race on the inside, by the rail, where things got tight. “What I like most about my jockey,” Buddy said, “is that he wins so many races by saving ground.” It was a tip of the trainer’s fedora to his young jockey’s courage.
In 1973 the whole world could see how much faith Buddy had in Cusimano. Buddy asked the kid to ride Ecole Etage in the Preakness Stakes. The fine young colt belonged to Robert and Harry Meyerhoff, two of Buddy’s most important clients. The Preakness was the biggest race any of them had yet reached.
It looked like a good decision at the first turn. Cusimano and Ecole Etage led the field. But then a horse emerged from the group, kicked into gear, and streaked past them like a blur. It was Secretariat in the midst of his historic Triple Crown. Ecole Etage finished fourth, and whatever fame he earned was in his all too brief proximity to Secretariat.
Cusimano’s success didn’t prevent him from being Buddy’s beast of burden. The paternalistic Delp insisted that the rider, despite his growing reputation, continue to do menial jobs around the barns, as he had when he was younger. Buddy paid Cusimano, a Preakness jockey, the parsimonious sum of $70 per week to do grunt work. Delp explained the unusual arrangement much like a concerned father would. He bragged that the stingy fee he paid George was a character builder. That money was for living expenses, while the money the jockey earned race riding was placed in “sound investments” chosen by Buddy himself.
All of this was very good publicity for Delp, and the press painted him in sympathetic hues. Not only was Buddy a successful breaker of horses; it appeared he was also a stern but loving molder of men.
Buddy had certainly taught the young, uneducated George, a boy with few other paths to opportunity, how to make an outsized living. But did he ever pass on a sense of the career’s pitfalls and problems?
By age twenty-six Cusimano was married with a little boy and a baby girl on the way. But his life at home wasn’t easy. His wife, June, and his mother did not get along, and in fact, they barely spoke to each other.
George dealt with his many career and personal stresses with drugs. He drank heavily, smoked marijuana liberally, and gulped pills. As his dependency on these habits grew, his career went in the wrong direction. By 1977 he was already overshadowed by ascending young riders such as Vince Bracciale and, especially, Chris McCarron, who was recognized by virtually everyone in racing as a special talent.
While these riders gained national attention, Cusimano slipped far off the radar. He was only the eighth leading jockey in the standings at Delaware Park.
On September 3, 1977, at Delaware, Cusimano continued his downward trend. He rode five horses that dreary day, finishing second on one and completely out of the money on the other four.
After the work was done, George and his agent, Larry Waters, were scheduled to play softball in the “backstretch league,” one of many fun diversions track officials organized to keep employees entertained and out of trouble. But before the game Cusimano and Waters met up in the jockeys’ parking lot to down a few beers. As they drank, they got out of control, bragging and goading each other into a drag race. Finally, they jumped into their cars, and leaving their friends behind, they drove to a spot behind the grandstand. In their inebriated states they had peered out on the long, smooth stretch of uninterrupted asphalt and saw a motor raceway.
Cusimano wasn’t a great driver. He had only recently wrecked his Cadillac, which meant that he was driving June’s Opel. A popular model in its era, the Opel was manufactured by General Motors to be a sports car for the masses. GM copywriters bragged that it was a “spirited” vehicle of “uncomplicated excitement.”
But George was about to find out otherwise.
He hopped behind the wheel of June’s vehicle, revved the engine, and sped off into his impromptu competition. In the heat of the race, he lost control, and in a thunderous collision smashed into a tree beside the road. His small, slick machine no longer resembled a car; it was a grotesquery of twisted steel.
Firemen rushed to the scene, but they were too late. They cut and pried the shell open just so that they could lift out Cusimano’s already lifeless body.
Because George had been a popular figure around the Maryland and Delaware tracks, his sad death was reported in Baltimore, Washington, and Wilmington newspapers, and a day of tribute was hastily arranged for him at Bowie Race Track.
If Buddy grieved the death of his protégé, he didn’t agonize about it very long. Just one month after the accident he was interviewed for a Washington Post article. Sorely lacking in either sentiment or discretion, Delp brutalized the kid’s memory. “George . . . had a terrible temper,” Buddy said. “I think that is what kept him from making it to the top. If a horse would run bad, or if George got himself in a tough spot during a race, and it happened early on in the program, that would affect his riding the rest of the day.”
Delp criticized more than Cusimano’s riding skills. He also attacked the rider’s character, claiming he was barbaric with the animals. “[George] would get so mad at times,” Delp said, “that he’d abuse a horse with his whip.”
Buddy also depicted Cusimano as a money grabber, caring more about the pay than the profession. “I don’t think George really loved horses, or horse racing,” Delp said. “Certainly, he didn’t like it the way you have to love it if you want to be great. He liked the money it made for him. But that was about it.”
Finally, Delp summed up his former protégé as lazy and unmotivated. George was “content to be ordinary,” Buddy said. Over and over Buddy had punctured the boy’s dignity and privacy, seemingly throwing in everything and sparing nothing as he cataloged Cusimano’s failings. And yet he never mentioned the young rider’s drug abuse.
Was it an accidental oversight or, perhaps, a deliberate act of omission?
Certainly whatever had gone wrong with Cusimano, whatever he was involved in, Delp would have known about it. Gerald knew of Cusimano’s drug use, and so did Buddy’s veterinarian, Jimmy Stewart. And Buddy himself, as employer and father figure, was closer to Cusimano than anyone. He had spent years tutoring and nurturing George’s career, he had held Cusimano’s contract for many years, and he was the only male role model the kid had ever known. So if anyone had molded the kid’s character and habits, it was Buddy Delp. What, then, did it say about Delp that he found Cusimano so lacking?
If no one bothered to ask those questions, one thing was for sure: the deceased kid’s mother and his eight-months’ pregnant widow could read every unflattering word Buddy Delp had said, and they read it all on “George Cusimano Day” at Bowie Race Track.
Cathy Rosenberger knew George Cusimano well, as she did many of the young riders, called “bug boys.” She worked with them at the track and rented rooms to some of them in her home. Her place was so close to Laurel Race Track that she could hear the announcer from her backyard. Cathy knew from hard experience that they were prone to all kinds of dangers and grifts.
Working and living with these young men, Cathy had a unique view of their travails. She saw them struggle with boredom, depression, weight maintenance, and relationships with women. She saw them grapple with the pain that was endemic to their careers. Cathy knew they self-medicated because she found the evidence of it in her own laundry room. That’s where she would pick up the rolled-up dollar bills, the makeshift straws they used to snort cocaine.
Cathy remembered one jockey who was constantly struggling with his weight. He took an awful spill one day at Bowie Race Track and was immediately helicoptered to Shock Trauma in Baltimore. At the hospital he was started on an IV for nourishment. That slow drip must have been fattening. The young, injured jockey “gained twelve pounds in twenty-four hours,” Rosenberger remembered.
Perhaps the most destructive force attacking the riders was their own success. The influx of cash in their inexperienced hands made them easy targets for exploitation. When the money showed up, so did the women that the track workers derisively called “jock chasers.” They soothed the young athletes, eased their anxieties, and in the most pleasant way possible relieved them of their cash. “They’re happy to help you spend your money,” another boyish jockey, Steve Cauthen, said.
A different kind of threat arrived at the barns in shiny shoes. It was the agents who came bearing big smiles and dozens of donuts. They arrived looking for clients, using the sugary treats like worms on a hook. Their job was to protect the young jockeys’ interests, yet they could deliver the most long-lasting and devastating damage of all to an emerging rider’s life.
The agents’ kindness seemed to have no bounds. Many claimed that they would do anything to help a client and protect him. To prove it, an agent would sometimes move a young rider right into his own home. It all appeared so altruistic, an act of extreme generosity. But it was rarely what it seemed. “The [agent] would have a party on the jockey’s tab,” Rosenberger remembered. She said it wasn’t unusual in those days for the agents to introduce their young clients to cocaine, hooking them on the highly addictive drug just as their incomes were soaring. While the good times rolled, the jockey paid for all the drugs in the agent’s house, including the coke-and-pill binges for everyone who visited.
Everything was fine as long as the jockey was a winner and a good earner. But early success rarely lasted. Careers stalled as bodies matured and healthy weight was gained. If and when that happened, the kid would be cut loose from his representative, put out of the house, and left with little more than a fat tax bill for money that had long since been inhaled. “The young jockeys had a lot of trouble managing their money and nobody helped them,” Rosenberger said.
Buddy Delp was there for a few of them, but only to a point. Despite his protests that training jockeys was not for him, he took on other aspiring riders. The first one after Cusimano was Wayne Berardi, and like George, he was an early winner and popular with race crowds. At Delaware Park the management passed out custom pins that said “Wayne Will Win.”
Berardi was a good boy. He was attached to his parents, lived at home, and saved his money. His mother and father were his biggest boosters, coming to all his races and watching him perform his dangerous work. His mother in particular had a hard time viewing it. “She’s at the track every time I ride,” the young Berardi said. “She still can’t watch the horses break from the starting gate. She says she fears something might happen to me. But once the gate opens she watches me all the way.”
When her eyes were open, Mrs. Berardi saw a lot of great moments. Wayne came along on the heels of Chris McCarron’s magical ride. McCarron had just been named the nation’s top apprentice, and Berardi was showing a great deal of promise too.
On the track McCarron and Berardi were fierce but friendly rivals. They were the same age, with identical ambitions, and often found themselves nose-to-nose in the same races. Though McCarron was clearly a superior talent and already making a big name for himself, on any given day Berardi was capable of beating him. In fact, on one particular day, Berardi beat McCarron twice. Off the track their friendship was cemented by a mutual love for ice hockey, and they skated together in the same league.
But while McCarron’s best years were still ahead of him, Berardi’s days as a top jockey were severely limited. That became evident at Laurel one late October day in 1974. With his mother in the stands anxiously looking on as usual, Berardi got a leg up for the twelve-horse second race and sat atop Ready ’n Willing. McCarron, then the leading rider in the nation, was aboard Better Bee Great.
Berardi broke well from the gate and at the three-eighth’s pole challenged for second place. But just then Ready ’n Willing’s leg snapped, throwing Berardi to the ground. He was stunned by the fall, and in his groggy state he sat up. That simple act exposed his head to the rest of the field and, with most of the horses still behind him, put his life in danger.
Swift Wink tripped over the vulnerable Berardi and threw his rider, Danny Wright. Landing on the track, Wright painfully broke his collar bone but, all things considered, got off easy. Berardi, on the other hand, was hit by several horses as they thundered over him. The very last one, Annie Active, kicked him in the head with astonishing force.
Mark Reid, a young groom sitting by the rail and watching the race, ran out onto the track to help Berardi and was instantly sickened by what he found. “[Berardi’s] body wasn’t moving at all,” Reid said. “I thought he was dead. When I got to him out on the track, I could see a large hole in his skull. I could see his brain.”
Berardi was flown by helicopter to Baltimore’s University of Maryland Hospital, where he fell into a coma. Meanwhile, back at Laurel, Ready ’n Willing was in even worse shape and was humanely destroyed. In almost a footnote to the tragedy, Annie Active won the race. But that was small consolation for her rider, Herbie Hinojosa, who went to the winner’s circle with tears flowing from his eyes.
As for Berardi, up till then his life had been one of rapid forward motion. By the time he was twenty years old, he had already surpassed one hundred career victories. But now he was lying motionless in a Baltimore hospital bed with a swollen brain. His life was teetering.
Berardi came through as he always had, courageously outracing death like a homestretch competitor. But the road back to life was a tough one. After his coma he went into a stupor. After that he was finally allowed to go home, where he convalesced under the loving gaze of his parents. They had watched all of his glorious moments, but now they were forced to look on as he relearned the fundamental things they’d taught him as a child: how to feed himself, how to get dressed, and how to bathe. Incredibly, he also learned how to ride again. But he would never be the same jockey or young man.
After the accident and through the long, slow recovery there was quite a bit written about Berardi. The press was fascinated by his accident and especially by his journey back to the irons and competitive racing. Yet quotations from one man were scarce. Buddy Delp had but little to say about Berardi’s cheating death and miraculous come back. Buddy had learned a lot of things in racing, but most of all he knew when it was over. Soon he had a new protégé.
Delp had said that he didn’t like to “build” his own jockeys, but there was a rational reason for doing it that could be summed up in one word: control. The young riders who were largely uneducated and desperate for financial opportunity did what they were told.
The next one was Richard Duncan.
Much like George Cusimano, Duncan—called “Dicky” by everyone—was referred to Buddy by a family member who was connected to racing and knew the trainer. Dicky had grown up on horse farms and was already an adept rider when he reported to Delp’s stables.
Duncan owned his first pony when he was only four years old. On Christmas Day, after all of his presents had been opened, his dad led him outside in his bathrobe and pajamas. They walked across the frozen ground together, holding hands, and went into the barn. There in one of the stalls was a magnificent black pony with a white patch in the shape of the letter “L” on his side and a big red bow attached to his shoulder. It was Dicky’s last Christmas present, and at the sight of it he burst into tears of joy. They named the horse Nicky, and the boy and his pony were so inseparable that they came to be known as “Nicky and Dicky,” as though they were a single unit.
Years later the mere memory of that Christmas could still reduce Duncan to tears. When he became a professional jockey, it was the fulfillment of the only dream he’d ever had.
Buddy took him on with the intention of bringing him along slowly, but circumstances accelerated the timeline. Dicky was exercising a horse one day when he overheard Delp and his regular jockey, Bobby Woodhouse, in the tack room raising their voices. Eventually they came bursting out of the door, both of them clearly enraged and shouting at each other.
The argument ended with a bang when Woodhouse violently crowded Delp and sputtered in his face, “Fuck you, you baldheaded son of a bitch!” With that, Woodhouse stormed off, and Delp was left standing alone, mopping his face and beet-red bald pate with his handkerchief. Recollecting himself and looking around, he spied Duncan sitting atop one of the colts and ordered him down.
“Get off that fucking horse!” Delp shouted.
“Yes, sir,” Dicky said.
“You’re riding eight today,” Buddy told him.
In other words, Delp assigned him to ride eight horses that afternoon in place of the deposed Woodhouse. And with that Dicky Duncan’s career was off and running.
Dicky soon rode winners at Laurel, Bowie, and Pimlico, and Delp and other trainers were feeding him quality horses on a daily basis. But Duncan’s good relationship with Delp didn’t last long. For Dicky the first warning sign was that Buddy attempted to become overly familiar with him. In a sociable mood after work one evening, Buddy produced a bag of cocaine “the size of a flour sack.” No doubt in Buddy’s mind the sheer volume of the coke spoke to his power and success. But to Duncan it said something else. A regular coke user himself, Duncan found Delp reckless and conspicuous about his illegal hobbies. Dicky didn’t like being in the presence of that much cocaine. “I was afraid he’d get us all arrested,” he said.
But that was nothing compared to what came next. A few days later, Buddy pulled Dicky aside just prior to a long day of racing and, in lieu of instructions, the trainer made a rather forceful demand: “The horse you’re riding in the seventh today does not hit the board,” Buddy said.
Dicky’s horse was the favorite, and from Delp’s own stable, but Buddy wanted to ensure that it wouldn’t even finish third. The reason was simple. Delp had placed a bet on a different colt. And what was the risk for Buddy? If the jockey was determined to be holding back or cheating, the problem would be all Dicky’s.
In that era trainers regularly manipulated races to their advantage. In fact, many of them considered it a necessity of doing business and getting ahead since purses were so small. They might use what they knew about a horse’s condition as an advantage at the betting window. It also wasn’t unusual to tell a jockey in a claiming race, “Don’t abuse him.” In other words, don’t use the whip too much. The goal was to win if the jockey could win it, but if he couldn’t, he was told to hold the horse back so he wouldn’t finish second or third. That kept a good animal from getting claimed. Then the next time the horse ran, with expectations for him lowered, the trainer could place an educated bet on that horse, knowing that its record didn’t match its ability.
Buddy took these practices a step further by demanding that Duncan throw the race altogether. Dicky did exactly as he was told, and everything worked out smoothly. The horse lost. Buddy won his bet. The rider kept his job. And everyone was happy.
But if there was any relief for Dicky when it was all over, he was sadly mistaken. The successful completion of the mission only begged for more of the same. Soon Buddy was asking him to hold horses on a regular basis. Duncan didn’t have much choice but to comply. Defying his powerful boss was tantamount to losing his best patron and perhaps his whole career. So every time Delp asked him to throw a race, he did it.
It happened seven times in all.
But it all came to an ugly end one wet day when the reins were slippery, the surface was muddy, and the horses difficult to control. Again Buddy instructed Duncan to finish out of the money. But under the burdensome riding conditions the neophyte Dicky lost control of the horse and despite himself finished third. Worse than that, he utterly lacked artifice. He fumbled with the reins, making his manipulations and intentions so obvious that at least one experienced observer knew exactly what he was doing and why.
After the race, a highly respected veteran jockey pulled Dicky aside and furtively told him to meet him in the jockeys’ room shower. It wasn’t an offer of romance; the showers were their funky “Cone of Silence.” They stood under the dripping nozzles, fully clothed in their silks and speckled with mud and with no one to listen in on their furtive conversation but the bathroom tiles.
The older jockey looked at Duncan with a careworn face. He didn’t waste time pretending. “I know what Bud is asking you to do,” he said, “but if you get caught, you’ll be the one going to jail for ten years.”
The older rider was one of Buddy Delp’s long-standing friends, and he had ridden for the trainer many times. He’d also seen other riders arrested for the very same thing he had just witnessed Dicky doing. He promised the young man that he would speak to Buddy that night and tell him to back off.
But the next morning, Delp wasn’t contrite; he was livid. Upon first sight of Duncan, Buddy grabbed him and threw him in the tack room. “You’re fired!” Buddy boomed. “You’re through. You’ll never ride another horse for me again.”
It was a hard thing for Duncan to hear. He’d dreamed of this career, race riding, since he had gotten his first leg up on his Christmas pony. And he knew that something far worse than losing a job had happened. He’d taken something very innocent and meaningful to him, something sacred and pure inside of him, and he’d allowed Buddy to corrupt and profane it.
All the frustration and self-disgust welled up inside Dicky until he turned to his former mentor with wild eyes and a suddenly unfiltered mouth and vomited his revulsion. “Go fuck yourself, you baldheaded mother fucker,” Dicky yelled at Buddy. But it was also a fitting eulogy for his own innocence.
And just like that another young protégé stalked off from Buddy’s stable forever. Every one of the young jockeys had come to Buddy Delp looking for the same thing: recognition of talent and confirmation for their feelings of self-worth. They needed a leg up, a chance to earn, and a moment in the sun. All any of them ever wanted was experience. Buddy gave that to them, all right—much more than they had bargained for.