Month: June 2018

Two selection on the program today. Keith Jones looks at races 6 and 7. Listen in to hear who Keith likes.

Scott Gager has been a horse dentist for 40 years, a singer for just six. His dad, Eddie Gager, also an equine dentist, actually wrote the book on it: “Sound Mouth, Sound Horse”. Scott’s son Andrew is in his 10^th year working on horses’ teeth. The singing? That just happened on New Year’s Eve 2011 at a karaoke party.

The singing dentist, 54, is a fixture on the Parx Racing backstretch. When morning training is over and the afternoon races begin, Scott Gager is working on equine teeth. The rest of the time? Well, he is singing.

“We actually float the teeth, what we call filing the teeth so we take the rough edges out of a horse’s mouth,” Gager said on a recent morning at the track. “It would be the equivalent of a blacksmith in a horse’s mouth. We’re making sure everything’s smooth because they have the bit contact with a horse so we want them not to be able to throw their heads, lug in, lug out. It’s a very important thing that trainers around here do.”

The dental work was, and is, a family tradition. The singing happened quite by accident. Gager’s wife Debbie “coaxed me to get up in front of a group that was all doing karaoke”.

“She said when the radio comes up, you sound just like James Taylor,” Gager remembered. “I said ‘well, I’m not getting up there so forget about it’. She said ‘these people are terrible, just do it.’”

So he did it.

“I got up there and starting singing a James Taylor song, ‘Carolina In My Mind’ and within a few seconds, everybody’s cell phone was out,” Gager said. “I didn’t think anything of it. Nobody even said anything to me. A month later, it was posted.”

And Gager began to think he could make some extra cash being James Taylor. Within a few weeks, he realized he could do several voices. He auditioned for a job in Robbinsville, N.J., got it and, within five months, he was at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City four nights a week

Scott Gager, “The Man of 100 Voices”, was born. He has seven octaves in his voice and he is now technically up to 200 voices, ranging from Elvis Presley and then to Louie Armstrong.

“Who finds out they can sing at 48?” he said. “I can change my voice from Johnny Cash to Frankie Valli.”

“I can be anybody I want to be on stage,” Gager said.

On Aug 13, 2017, he created a Facebook Page called “Scott Gager Man of 100 Voices”. He already has 27,500 followers.

He has sung the National Anthem at the United States Capitol Building.

And by day, he is still out there messing with horses’ teeth, although his son Andrew does most of the work now.

“I actually use my hand as a speculum,” Gager said, explaining the technique. “I put it in between the bars of a horse’s mouth and I can reach every tooth in the horse’s mouth with my hands.”

One hand actually keeps the horse’s mouth open while he is working on the teeth.

“I hold their tongue,” Gager said. “I have their tongue almost outside their mouth. I reach in with my other hand and just feel the teeth.”

He uses a hand float bolstered by his arm and body strength. Over his career, he figures he has done 100,000 horses, approximately 2,500 per year. His dad, he thinks, worked on 90,000. Younger horses need their teeth worked on three or four times per year. As they age, they need fewer visits from the dentist who is not unmindful that he is working with 1,000-pound animals.

“It is dangerous,” Gager said. “I’ve been run over by horses, struck by horses, kicked, everything. Most of the horses, especially racehorses, they get a bad rap. The Thoroughbreds are actually the nicest horses. They’re the most handled. People around here are good horsemen. They’re super easy to do. They’re my favorite horses to work on.”

And Parx Racing is one of his favorite places to work.

“What I’ve seen with Pennsylvania is the breeding program has just exploded,” Gager said. “You’re getting a nice bonus for having a PA-Bred racehorse. Everybody wants PA-Breds. I think they are really climbing up the ladder, contending with these other states now. I think the stats show that.”

It was at Parx where an incident in trainer Ron Glorioso’s barn at 8:38 am on May 5, 2014 became a music video classic. Fellow equine dentist Paul Briscione was walking down the shedrow with two buckets of water when he did not notice an orange cone in front of a horse’s stall and got bitten when he got too close to the horse. Gager captured the resulting mayhem in “That Horse Bit Me”, a song he wrote in about 10 minutes.

His wife wrote a haunting song about returning soldiers with PTSD, called “Alone”. Scott sings it beautifully. He wrote “Red and Blue” when he saw the presidential map on television the morning after the 2012 election. Paul Presto contributed the music to both songs.

So the Man of Now-200 Voices is also the Man of Two Careers, one he has been doing forever; one he might be doing forevermore.

Favored Aztec Sense Proves Best in Turning for Home Stakes

Joseph Besecker’s Aztec Sense took command coming off the final turn and then drew away in the last furlong to win the $100,000 Turning for Home Stakes by three and a half lengths Saturday afternoon at Parx. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the race was the centerpiece of an afternoon dedicated to the Turning for Home program, the racing industries leader in finding and providing new homes and new careers, having now placed over 2,500 retired thoroughbred race horses.

Coming off three consecutive front running victories, Aztec Sense, a 5 year-old gelded son of Street Sense, was expected to be on or near the lead again. However, with a quartet of others all being aggressive in the run to the first turn, winning jockey Paco Lopez instead opted to take back with Aztec Sense, sitting in the clear and fifth on the outside  in the opening stages. He wouldn’t stay there for long. Entering the backstretch, Aztec Sense made a sudden move and quickly went from fifth to second just to the outside of early leader, Thirtysilverpieces with about five furlongs to run. Long shot Moon Gate Warrior (34-1) was also making an early move up the backside, slipped through on the inside of Thirtysilverpieces nearing the half mile pole and took charge after an opening half of 48.83.

Moon Gate Warrior and Aztec Sense remained one-two racing to the far turn, beginning to get some separation on the rest of the field.  Aztec Sense moved to engage the long shot leader midway on the final turn and was roused to the lead at the head of the stretch. Quickly moving clear, Aztec Sense never seemed fully extended through the last eighth of a mile and cruised home a solid three and a half lengths in front.

The win was the fourth straight for Aztec Sense.  Since being claimed for $12,500 out of a start last October by trainer Jorge Navarro, who also won the Turning for Home last year with Maritime Pulpit, Aztec Sense has won five of six and is now a multiple stakes winner. Saturday he was sent off as the heavy favorite at 3-5 and paid $3.40, 2.40 and 2.10. Moon Gate Warrior was making his first start after a $5,000 claim by trainer Lou Linder and ran big in defeat, 12 lengths clear for second, returning 21.60 and 11.00. Ruby Bleu (9-1) out finished the others for third and paid 4.60 to show. The final time for the one mile and one-sixteenth on a track labeled good was 1:47.53.

Joseph Besecker’s Aztec Sense took command coming off the final turn and then drew away in the last furlong to win the $100,000 Turning for Home Stakes by three and a half lengths Saturday afternoon at Parx. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the race was the centerpiece of an afternoon dedicated to the Turning for Home program, the racing industries leader in finding and providing new homes and new careers, having now placed over 2,500 retired thoroughbred race horses.

Coming off three consecutive front running victories, Aztec Sense, a 5 year-old gelded son of Street Sense, was expected to be on or near the lead again. However, with a quartet of others all being aggressive in the run to the first turn, winning jockey Paco Lopez instead opted to take back with Aztec Sense, sitting in the clear and fifth on the outside in the opening stages. He wouldn’t stay there for long. Entering the backstretch, Aztec Sense made a sudden move and quickly went from fifth to second just to the outside of early leader, Thirtysilverpieces with about five furlongs to run. Long shot Moon Gate Warrior (34-1) was also making an early move up the backside, slipped through on the inside of Thirtysilverpieces nearing the half mile pole and took charge after an opening half of 48.83.

Moon Gate Warrior and Aztec Sense remained one-two racing to the far turn, beginning to get some separation on the rest of the field. Aztec Sense moved to engage the long shot leader midway on the final turn and was roused to the lead at the head of the stretch. Quickly moving clear, Aztec Sense never seemed fully extended through the last eighth of a mile and cruised home a solid three and a half lengths in front.

The win was the fourth straight for Aztec Sense. Since being claimed for $12,500 out of a start last October by trainer Jorge Navarro, who also won the Turning for Home last year with Maritime Pulpit, Aztec Sense has won five of six and is now a multiple stakes winner. Saturday he was sent off as the heavy favorite at 3-5 and paid $3.40, 2.40 and 2.10. Moon Gate Warrior was making his first start after a $5,000 claim by trainer Lou Linder and ran big in defeat, 12 lengths clear for second, returning 21.60 and 11.00. Ruby Bleu (9-1) out finished the others for third and paid 4.60 to show. The final time for the one mile and one-sixteenth on a track labeled good was 1:47.53.

Keith Jones takes a look at today’s race 6 in the Parx Racing program and the Ohio Derby. Listen in for Keith’s picks! Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association – PTHA

Join us for Race Day today! Don’t let the weather keep you away from today’s races, head over and enjoy free family fun in the Picnic Grove, LIVE music and our jockey t-shirt tosses after every live race. http://bit.ly/2IiChVX

By Dick Jerardi

It was Oct. 10, 1974 when Ron Glorioso arrived with a few horses at Keystone Race Track. It was just him and the horses, the opening of the track still 25 days away, the stable area otherwise unoccupied, the future uncertain.

Glorioso, who turned 76 on June 18, remains in the same stable area today, a walking, talking history lesson on the track that became Philadelphia Park and is now called Parx.

A Pennsylvania State Trooper for five years, Glorioso who grew up at Broad and Erie in Philadelphia always had an affinity for horses. His father first took him to the race track when he was a freshman at North Catholic High School. He was in the state police mounted unit. He owned pieces of a few race horses.

Eventually, he worked his way to the track full time and became a trainer. He ran a stable with then-wife Pat, who was the listed trainer on the program back in the 1970s. She won 338 races. Glorioso has won 685 more in his own name so the stable has won more than 1,000 races.

At his peak, Glorioso had 27 horses in his barn. After being badly injured in a March 22, 2011 car accident not far from the track, he is down to two. His enthusiasm for the game and his home track, however, has never waned.

“The horsemen can really thank the legislature for improving everything,” said Glorioso, a born storyteller who is never satisfied with a few words when a few hundred will make him feel more alive. “We have pensions, health benefits, life insurance policies. People don’t know what’s going on. I never envisioned the purses we have now. It’s unbelievable what has happened.”

Glorioso remembers names and dates from decades ago like they happened yesterday. He knew that Parx Hall of Famer Gallant Bob made his first start at Liberty Bell Park in a maiden $12,500 claimer on July 15, 1974 and won at 46-1. At one stage of his amazing career, Gallant Bob won nine consecutive stakes in five different states, four of them at Keystone, his home track.

Glorioso will never forget when his mentor Pete Durfey, who was in Kentucky looking at young horses, told him “on my mother’s grave, there’s a colt down here who you can buy privately for $20,000. He’s a little crooked on the right side, but he’s the best looking yearling I’ve seen in 50 years.”

So Glorioso went to his partner who told him “there ain’t no horse worth $20,000”.

That horse was Seattle Slew.

“You’re right,” Glorioso told his partner a few years later, “he wasn’t worth $20,000. They just syndicated him for $12 million.”

In the summer of 2015, Glorioso finally got his first big horse. Cait the Great nearly ran out of the TV set in winning her first start. The trainer had visions of the 2016 Kentucky Oaks.

Soon after that first start, Glorioso came to the barn one day and noticed that the filly had several cuts on her head. Another horse had jumped over the webbing of her stall, causing her to hit her head. He was hoping the cuts were just superficial, but when he ran Cait the Great again, she wasn’t the same. Turned out she had a fractured skull. She eventually won again, but was never the star she might have become.

He remembered that his first good horse, You Can’t Tell, cost $4,200 and won the last race at Keystone on June 11, 1977 – the day Seattle Slew won the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown.

“That’s the horse that got us rolling,” said Glorioso, the man who has been at Parx longer than anybody.

Back in 1974 before the opening, Glorioso taped commercials with Don Meredith, the former Cowboys quarterback who was then a star commentator on “Monday Night Football”. So, he was talking about his home track even then. Nothing much has changed in that respect over the last 44 years.