Jeff Siegel, the renowned Southern California television commentator and syndicated handicapper who was also a race-horse owner and college basketball enthusiast, died on Saturday after a lengthy illness, Santa Anita officials said. Siegel was 74. He spent nearly his entire adult life in various capacities of racing, beginning with a position on the Hollywood Park publicity staff in 1974. Southern California racegoers for decades read Siegel’s selections in Los Angeles-area newspapers, notably the Pasadena Star-News and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Later in his career Siegel ventured into television commentary, offering analysis on racetrack-sponsored programs on a Los Angeles independent television station, and for the last few decades as a mainstay on racetrack-produced in-house handicapping programs. Jeff Siegel, it seems, was everywhere in Los Angeles racing from the 1970s until as recently as earlier this year. As a horse owner, Siegel and former Daily Racing Form correspondent Barry Irwin launched the Clover Racing Stable, one of the most successful Thoroughbred limited partnerships in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Clover banner was later changed to its current name of Team Valor Racing, although Siegel long ago left the organization. As Clover Racing, the group’s success was highlighted with an upset win by Martial Law in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap at 50-1 in 1989. Martial Law was supplemented to the race for $25,000. Among its other stakes wins, Clover Racing co-owned Prized, winner of the 1989 Breeders’ Cup Turf, and Political Ambition, who won a division of the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby in 1987. In recent years, Siegel co-owned a few runners with Eric Sondheimer, the longtime high school sportswriter with the Los Angeles Times. Siegel’s health deteriorated in recent months. As recently as spring 2024, he took on an added role as a morning-line oddsmaker at Santa Anita, a job he described to friends as one of the toughest assignments of an extensive career. He relinquished the role earlier this year. A funeral is scheduled at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Simi Valley, Calif., for 10 a.m. on Oct. 13. Siegel is survived by a brother, Barry, and sister, Michelle Weiss. Born in Los Angeles in October 1950, Siegel was a racing fan as a child, and a racegoer while attending college. “I never dreamed there would be any place in the industry for me,” Siegel told Daily Racing Form in 2011. “But things have a way of working out.” In his youth, Siegel attended area tracks with his father, taking a contrarian approach to his dad’s handicapping. “Through the years, I listened very closely to his methods and theories and I did the opposite,” Siegel said. “By the time I graduated college, I must have read every handicapping book ever published.” After college, Siegel worked at KLAC radio, where he met the popular Los Angeles sports commentator Jim Healy. Through Healy, Siegel gained a position in Hollywood Park’s publicity department. A contemporary of the noted California public handicappers Jerry Antonucci, Gordon Jones, Jack Karlik and many others, Siegel was a mainstay at a time when racetrack press boxes were often full. Siegel and Karlik bred and co-owned Aloha Prospector, the 1988 California-bred champion 3-year-old male. In 1988, Aloha Prospector won the Bolsa Chica Stakes at Santa Anita, the Swift Stakes at Aqueduct, and the Piedmont Stakes at Golden Gate Fields in a six-race campaign. In the 1980s, Siegel and his press box colleagues would often pool money to buy expensive pick six tickets, at a time when the bet was gaining popularity. In 1984, the group hit the pick six for nearly $800,000, Siegel told Daily Racing Form. “We hit a number of those back then, well not that big, but we were pretty flush for a long time,” Siegel said in a 2011 interview. “Jeff Siegel was the finest handicapper I've been around,” Jay Privman, the retired national correspondent for Daily Racing Form, wrote in an email on Saturday. “He just had an innate feel for both the art and science of handicapping, and how to meld all of that -- watching races, incorporating figures, interpreting workouts -- into an opinion that was unparalleled. “He was a genuinely nice guy, sincerely rooting for the best for everyone. He was very generous about sharing his knowledge. When I first came around in the early 1980s, he was extremely helpful whenever I had questions, and I guarantee you every press box denizen of the 1980s - and there were a lot of us back then - have fond memories of the nightly Siegel Seminars, where we would gather around the lunch table in the press box after the races and listen as Siegel went through the next day's card.” As the pick six success showed, Siegel was not afraid to back his selections enthusiastically. Sometimes, he showed too much vigor. When watching races with more than a few bucks involved, Siegel often stood, rocking back and forth on his toes and rooting for the rider involved. In one instance, at Del Mar in 1993, as The Wicked North won the Bing Crosby Handicap, Siegel was cheering with so much energy that he sustained a soft-tissue injury to a calf, and was carted out of the press box on a stretcher. He recovered. Through the years, Siegel migrated toward television, settling into a prominent role with HRTV, a Stronach Racing-backed entity that was based at Santa Anita and produced daily simulcast programs as well as a variety of handicapping shows. Away from the track, Siegel was an avid supporter of UCLA football and men’s basketball teams, even though he attended Cal-State Northridge and San Jose State. Siegel told Daily Racing Form in 2011 that he attended San Jose State because of its proximity to Bay Meadows in the Bay Area. Siegel grew up near UCLA. He sometimes interrupted his television work to attend college basketball games throughout the West. He had an association with the school’s sports information department. In the late 1970s, working with the handicapper Bob Selvin, Siegel launched the Handicapper’s Report, which incorporated speed figures, trip notes and workouts for upcoming races. “The information was superb,” Privman wrote. “Every serious player of that era subscribed; you had to if you wanted to succeed. This was before workouts were videotaped, so the opinion of Jeff and his private clocker was essential. And his performance ratings were a figure available to the public more than a decade before Beyers (Speed Figures) were widely disseminated.” Privman noted that Siegel’s ability to assess track biases, notably at Del Mar, “was sensational.” “Del Mar used to play differently before it was renovated in the early 1990s,” Privman wrote. “There was a phenomenon there when the rail would get really good. Siegel called it the ‘Del Mar jetstream,’ and he would pounce aggressively when it appeared.” In the 1970s and 1980s, Siegel studied trainers, including such notable names from Southern California racing as Julio Canani, Bobby Frankel, Eddie Gregson, Gary Jones, and Charlie Whittingham. Frankel used to visit the press box on racing days. “Because of his relationships with trainers, he often was privy to information few knew,” Privman wrote. When Martial Law won the Big Cap in 1989, Siegel watched while sitting alongside Privman in the front row of Santa Anita’s press box. “His cheering, as Martial Law and Martin Pedroza came through the stretch, and his reaction to the win, is seared into my brain,” Privman wrote. “’Work on him Martin. Work on him Martin. Work on him Martin. Yes, yes, yes, I win the Big Cap!’ “Sheer joy. He ran out of the press box and down the stairs faster than Straight No Chaser in the Breeders' Cup Sprint.”