Joel Rosario began the week singing karaoke for charity at Vapor Night Club in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. For an encore, he will try to win the $1 million Whitney Stakes (G1) Aug. 3 aboard Disarm. In between, Rosario became a member of the Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Racing.
The ceremony was held Aug. 2 at the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion, around the corner from the museum. Rosario was the only living human honored that morning, which sometimes is par for the course of a sport that reaches far into its past to remind itself of where it has been. Never mind where it's going.
A brace of red horses got the call this year, both after their first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot. Gun Runner raced for the last time in January 2018, winning the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes (G1) at Gulfstream Park, then three weeks later Justify made his winning debut in a maiden race at Santa Anita Park. Gun Runner raced 19 times over parts of four seasons and was 2017 Horse of the Year. Justify raced six times in one season and was a Triple Crown winner and 2018 Horse of the Year. Vive la différence.
Joel Rosario never rode either Gun Runner or Justify. He did ride Animal Kingdom to win the 2013 Dubai World Cup (G1), Tonalist and Sir Winston to win the 2014 and 2019 Belmont Stakes (G1), respecitvely, Epicenter to win the 2022 Travers Stakes (G1), and Orb to win the 2013 Kentucky Derby (G1), plus more than 3,600 other races of varying degrees of importance. His mounts have amassed $322 million in purses, which puts him in rare air, and his record of winning Breeders' Cup races is surpassed only by Mike Smith, John Velazquez, and Irad Ortiz Jr.
Rosario is also the first jockey from the Dominican Republic to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Seven other countries in what we gringos call Latin America are represented, going back to 1975 when Laffit Pincay Jr. of Panama was the first to be recognized among the early wave of Hispanic riders on the rise in the United States and Canada.
Pincay was just 28 when he was elected, which means he has been walking around as a Hall of Famer longer than any living soul. Back then, the rules for eligibility were, let's say, fluid. After a while, jockeys needed 15 years of riding before they could be on a Hall of Fame ballot. Today, the requirement is 20 years, barring the unforeseen, which is how it should be.
With 9,530 winners to his name, Pincay had retired by the time Rosario began riding.
"I liked him from the beginning," Pincay said this week. "I thought he was going to be a great rider, and he's proved that."
Rosario was introduced at the Hall of Fame ceremony by Ambassador Jose Singer, former special envoy to the United Nations from the Dominican Republic.
"I was very honored when Joel asked me to present him," Singer said. "Of course, when people think of the Dominican Republic and a Hall of Fame, they think of baseball. For horse racing, we're in different territory now."
Ask Rosario and he will tell you he always has been a power-hitting third baseman trapped in a jockey's body. As a youngster in his hometown of San Francisco de Macoris, there was rarely a day without after-school baseball. The pipeline of ballplayers from the Dominican Republic to Major League Baseball has been flowing steadily for years, although there was a 30-year gap in recognizing the best of them, from the induction of Juan Marichal in 1983 to Pedro Martinez in 2015. Since then, Dominicans Vladimir Guerrero, David "Big Papi" Ortiz, and Adrian Beltre have joined Marichal and Martinez in Cooperstown, N.Y., 65 miles south of Saratoga Springs.
Singer's history as a Thoroughbred owner in the Dominican Republic goes back half a century, which means Rosario was on his radar from the start. In December 2008, nearing the end of his breakout year in Southern California, Rosario journeyed to Puerto Rico to ride Dominican-bred Sicotico to victory for Singer and a partner in the $290,000 Clasico del Caribe.
Four years later, Rosario headed to New York to win the 2012 Easy Goer Stakes on the Belmont Stakes (G1) undercard with Singer's colt Teeth of the Dog, then returned to take the Dwyer Stakes (G2) as well. By the following year, he was riding in the East full-time, represented by agent Ron Anderson.
"Ron told me not to talk too long," Singer said. "I told him I have two personalities. As a businessman all my life, when I speak I am short and precise. When I represented the Dominican Republic in the United Nations Security Council, there I could talk and talk and say nothing. So I will do the business part of my personality."
Clement L. Hirsch died in 2000 and Joe Hirsch died in 2009. They were not related, except by a passionate devotion to Thoroughbred racing.
Clement's parents were St. Louis merchants who migrated to Los Angeles and thrived. He was instrumental in the early formation of the California division of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, helped usher in the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, and gave wings to the nonprofit Oak Tree Racing Association with likeminded partners.
Joe's folks were New Yorkers in the garment trade whose son earned a degree in journalism from New York University. He founded the National Turf Writers Association, mentored generations of younger scribes, and was an influential advocate for the creation of such international events as the Arlington Million, Breeders' Cup, and Japan Cup.
Joe Hirsch received the Eclipse Award of Merit in 1992. Clement Hirsch accepted the Eclipse Special Award on behalf of Oak Tree in 1998. One of them shared a Manhattan bachelor pad with Joe Namath, the other could be found sailing with his neighbor, John Wayne. Which did which hardly matters, since they all were larger than life.
Joe might have been at Garden State Park covering for Daily Racing Form in late 1970 when Clement came to town with his star filly June Darling. Clement welcomed Joe to Santa Anita Park for the Breeders' Cup celebrations hosted by Oak Tree in 1986 and 1993. Gone now but never forgotten, on Friday both Hirsches were added to the Hall of Fame as Pillars of the Turf, which is a shorthand way of describing their contributions to the sport as everlasting.
