Steward Merits Award

One of the guys in the trenches got his due Thursday.

Moved by uncommon brilliance, the Eclipse Awards people announced that they were giving Pete Pedersen--a racetrack steward, no less--the Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to the sport.

The only previous steward to win this award was Kentucky’s Keene Daingerfield, in 1985.

The Award of Merit is usually reserved for high-profile jockeys (Bill Shoemaker, Steve Cauthen), moneybags horse owners (Paul Mellon, Fred Hooper), longtime track executives (Bob Strub, Jimmy Kilroe) and media icons (Joe Hirsch, Jim McKay).

Usually, all racing stewards get is grief. One horse bumps another, and while reviewing the rerun the stewards must talk to the jockeys on the phone, knowing full well that whatever their decision, there will be a segment of bettors downstairs tearing up tickets, cursing the stewards and their luck, in that order.

The public may not know that refereeing eight or nine races a day is only a small part of a steward’s job. The day starts much earlier, when scratches for the races start coming in and entries are submitted for the next racing card.

In between, stewards draw the demarcation line in a potentially chaotic world.

Troubled jockeys and their lawyers show up, asking for another license and one more chance. A trainer offers to pay his overdue veterinary bill, if only they can give him a little more time. There are hearings upon hearings, marathon sessions punctuated by trainers proclaiming their innocence and chemists waving evidence of drugged horses.

The paperwork is boundless. Culprits can always appeal, to the California Horse Racing Board and then the civil courts, and if you’re a steward, you’d better have your Ts crossed and I’s dotted when the infighting gets to that level.

Pedersen, 81 last July 4, has been knocking around this milieu for more than half a century. A career racetracker, he’s been a steward since 1948. Since 1955, tracks all over California have been graced with his even-handed approach.

You don’t become a steward to make friends, yet somehow Pedersen has been able to do that. All those post-race dinners at The Derby, George Woolf’s old restaurant near Santa Anita, and not once has Pedersen felt imperiled by a seat with his back to the door.

The tough race calls he remembers best are the ones that riled the most blood.

He felt trainer Charlie Whittingham’s ire after Pedersen and his two associates disqualified Perrault and hung up John Henry’s number in the 1982 Santa Anita Handicap.

The same race, 12 years later, brought a cascade of boos when The Wicked North was disqualified in favor of Stuka, who had been beaten by almost two lengths. Most surprised person at the track was Gary Jones, the trainer of Stuka.

“To put it mildly, The Wicked North’s DQ wasn’t well-received,” Pedersen said. “We tried very hard to let the result stand. But we just couldn’t.”

The 1994 Santa Anita Handicap was a $1-million race, but at Hollywood Park in 1984, the day of the first Breeders’ Cup, there were seven races with $10 million in purses on the line, and two of them were decided in the stewards’ stand.

Fran’s Valentine was disqualified and Outstandingly moved up to first in the Juvenile Fillies.

Then in the Classic, which at $3 million was the richest thoroughbred race ever run, Wild Again’s win was allowed to stand--although Gate Dancer was penalized from second to third place--in the roughhouse, three-horse finish.

“The Fran’s Valentine decision wasn’t difficult because the foul was flagrant,” Pedersen said. “But what made it unusual was that the winner didn’t bother Outstandingly at all. The horse she fouled [Pirate’s Glow] finished far back.”

For 24 hours, the owners of Gate Dancer and Slew O’ Gold, the Classic’s third-place finisher, considered appeals, but they finally backed off.

“You try to say to yourself that judging one race is no different than any other, and the amount of the purse doesn’t matter,” Pedersen said. “But you’d have to be crazy if you really believed that.”

Pedersen recalled how owner Earl Scheib took Fran’s Valentine’s disqualification.

“He was asked later what he did,” Pedersen said. “Earl told them that he just had another drink and went home.”