Hovdey: Ogling history without going to Google

Mark Twain, as he aged, became obsessed with the fading of his memory, to the extent that he patented “Mark Twain’s Memory-Builder,” advertised as “A Game for Acquiring and Retaining All Sorts of Facts and Dates.”

Twain, who published “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” one year before his board game, described memory as, “… a curious machine and strangely capricious. It has no order, it has no system, it has no notion of values, it is always throwing away gold and hoarding rubbish.”

He got that right. Memory is the unreliable glue that holds a civilization together. Twain’s Memory-Builder relied on its players having at least a rudimentary liberal arts education so that one historical recollection would lead to another, and another, until the memories of the players were exercised to exhaustion. Not surprisingly, the game didn’t sell, and Twain kept writing.

Fans devoted to the history of Thoroughbred racing love to test their memories, for it is memories, both near and far, that sustain the everlasting romance of the sport. Search engines have shortened quarrels over names, dates, and final fractional times. But the true aficionado prefers to ransack their cluttered racing cortex until the answer pops up to score the point.

I prefer to always carry a copy of “Champions – The Lives, Times, and Past Performances of America’s Greatest Thoroughbreds,” published by DRF Press and in its fourth edition. Yes, it’s a little awkward, but it’s also indispensible at the track, where I’m often accosted by well-meaning strangers with something like, “Hey, writer guy. If you’re so smart who was the 2-year-old filly champion of 1968.” In an instant I’d be able to reply “Gallant Bloom,” and this week add, “the same Gallant Bloom with a race named in her honor on Sunday at Belmont Park, where she won a maiden race by nine lengths on June 19 of that year.”

Leafing through the pages to find various September 23rds of years gone by, the date seems to dangle between the breathless end of another Saratoga summer and the serious sport of the fall in New York and California. The Earth was rarely shaken. But, for the sake of stoking the memory banks, did you know that …

On Sept. 23, 1978, a gray colt by Bold Bidder named Spectacular Bid, having lost two of his first four starts, made his first significant headlines by winning the Grade 3 World’s Playground Stakes at Atlantic City by 15 lengths, getting the seven furlongs on a track labeled “good” in 1:20.80. He went on to win 23 of his next 25 races and become the best horse who ever looked at Buddy Delp through a bridle.

On Sept. 23, 1919, Old Rosebud, winner of the 1914 Kentucky Derby, won a minor handicap at Aqueduct in the mud. The race marked Old Rosebud’s fifth start of the month and 36th victory in a career, to that point, of 58 starts. He ended up winning 40 of 80 starts, but he was no more than a sad shadow of his past when he broke down in a workout at age 11 and was euthanized.

On Sept. 23, 1950, Greentree Stable’s One Hitter took advantage of every ounce of the 18 pounds he got from Charles Howard’s Noor to win the mile-and-a-half Manhattan Handicap at Belmont Park by a neck. Ponder, winner of the 1949 Kentucky Derby, was third, which pretty much defines the concept of a deep field. Noor was a champion, but One Hitter was no slouch. He went on to win races like the Whitney, the Suburban, the Mass ‘Cap, and the Monmouth Handicap, calling it quits after 88 starts.

On Sept. 23, 1978, while Spectacular Bid was doing his thing at Atlantic City, there must have been someone out there reading this who was at Belmont Park to watch Late Bloomer, a daughter of Stage Door Johnny, assert her superiority in the Ruffian Handicap. Late Bloomer unfurled a string of seven straight wins that year that included major stakes on turf and dirt, and was among a class of champions that included not only Bid, but also Affirmed and Seattle Slew.

On Sept. 23, 1990, Carl Nafzger managed to get Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled beaten for the second straight time. Earlier in the month, Unbridled finished second in the Secretariat Stakes to Super Abound. Then, on the date in question, Unbridled ran second to Home At Last in the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs. No one cried for Carl, though, since Nafzger also trained both Super Abound and Home At Last.

Finally, on Sept. 23, 1944, it’s back to Greentree Stable and the Manhattan Handicap at Belmont, where Devil Diver defied the experts by winning at a mile and one-half. Devil Diver was a Hall of Famer on the strength of his ability to dazzle at seven to 10 furlongs and carry substantial weight when asked. In his second of three Met Mile wins he packed 134 pounds. The Manhattan ended up a freakishly run race, with its first mile run in 1:48 and change on a dry track. Devil Diver sprinted the last half from there to win easily, and Eddie Arcaro was immediately signed to an endorsement deal with Sominex.

“I wrote a stakes race this year for older horses at 5 1/2 furlongs,” said New York racing chief John B. Campbell, “but this wasn’t supposed to be it.”