Hovdey: Tough week for the racing community

There is probably a simple truth behind the ominous old saying that bad things come in threes. For one thing, after two bad things have happened, a third can fry the brain. So, you bring things to a brief halt to absorb the blows before a fourth thing comes along, because there always will be a fourth thing.

Jack Disney was one of those old-school sportswriters who seemed like he just stepped out of “Front Page.” He was world-wise but never world-weary, a local boy who had a front-row seat for the emergence of Los Angeles as a major-league sports town, and he was there to chronicle every significant moment, from the westward migration of the Lakers and the Dodgers in the 1950s to the Summer Olympics of 1984.

When his paper went out from under him, Disney turned to the racetrack and spent the last 23 years of his working life in the publicity game, helping to cultivate the rapidly shrinking traditional media. At one point, he became his own best story to pitch as the part-owner of the accomplished grass horse On the Acorn. The fact that On the Acorn took two runnings of the Jim Murray Handicap at Hollywood Park was one of those delicious twists since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Murray was Disney’s sportswriting idol.

“I look back on my career, and it’s been all about fun,” Disney told L.A. Times columnist T.J. Simers in 2012 when he retired from Santa Anita. “Sports is supposed to be a diversion, not a passion.”

Disney died on Monday. He was 80.

It’s going to take a while to handle the news that Simon Bray, the former trainer and respected TVG and Fox Sports racing analyst, has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer that is being described as “incurable.” My first reaction was to cover my ears and sing “The Camptown Races” real loud so as not to hear any more of such airborne pornography. There is no earthly reason such a rotten thing should happen to such a good man, which is exactly why it does.

I steadfastly refuse to think of Bray as history, except as it pertains to the Thoroughbreds he trained, like stakes winners Astra and Startac, or the quality time he spent as one of Bill Mott’s assistants, or the places he has taken his audiences, from Tokyo to Toronto to Royal Ascot, always with the sense of someone who is right where he belongs. Bray has vowed to be back on the air again.

In the meantime, if you really want to know what Bray is facing, go read “A Lucky Life Interrupted” by former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, who was diagnosed with the same multiple myeloma in 2013. Brokaw, 75, relates his symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment with the cold-eyed detachment of a veteran newsman, which he is, and shares what there is to know about a disease that strikes only 1 percent of all cancer patients. As it turns out, the median age for the onset of multiple myeloma is 65. Bray is 45, with a young son and another child on the way.

As word of Bray’s illness was making the rounds last Saturday, I was sitting at the bedside of Eugene “Snake” McDaniel in a rehabilitation facility across the street from Santa Anita Park. Later that day, they would be running the Gold Cup at Santa Anita, which used to be the Hollywood Gold Cup when it was run on the other side of town.

McDaniel’s history with the Gold Cup is rich. In 1967, he was the man in the stall of Pretense for Charlie Whittingham when Pretense was rolling up some of the best races in the land, including the Santa Anita Handicap, the Gulfstream Park Handicap, and the American Handicap. He was odds-on in the Hollywood Gold Cup, but a loose horse got in his way that day, and he was unable to catch Native Diver.

Four years later, Whittingham and McDaniel were back for the Gold Cup with Ack Ack, a fearless beast on a six-race win streak that included such flamboyant exhibitions as the Santa Anita Handicap under 130 pounds, the Hollywood Express at 5 1/2 furlongs, and the American Handicap on the grass. Whittingham had yet to find out if the big horse could fly, but few doubted he could.

Ack Ack won that Gold Cup by daylight under 134 pounds, shading two minutes for the 10 furlongs in the bargain. It was his last race, and with it he clinched 1971 Horse of the Year. Now, 44 years later, McDaniel was holding an old Bill Mochon photo of Ack Ack and Bill Shoemaker in a workout on the grass. He was asked what he remembered about the best horse he ever rubbed.

“A freak,” Snake said, his voice not much more than a whisper. “A freak.”

McDaniel has lost both lower legs because of diabetes. The first was removed a month ago, the other one amputated barely a week before, and McDaniel was fighting the effects of post-operative depression and drug weariness.

“I’m sick of being in the hospital,” he said. “Need to get home.”

It wasn’t that long ago that Snake was still going to work each day at the Ben Cecil barn. Now he is faced with the physical rehab needed to strengthen his upper body and live with a much different kind of mobility. At any age, the challenge is daunting, not the least of it psychological. Snake McDaniel is 82.

“They keep cutting pieces off me,” McDaniel said.

Maybe so, but so far, they haven’t touched his heart.