Frank Mirahmadi Makes It Home

[Wandering Eyes]

There was a period when it was unclear whether Frank Mirahmadi would ever see a racetrack again. It’s a long time ago in feeling, considering where he sits now. In fact, it’s hardly two years since the veteran racecaller was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, stunning the racing world and putting an indeterminate halt to his decades-long career. Having recently been named the new announcer at iconic Santa Anita Park, precisely where he grew up falling in love with horse racing, Mirahmadi understandably struggles to explain the forces that led him from potentially near death to his fantasy job. But he made it, and his gratitude is only matched by his ability to tell the story.

Mirahmadi, raised in Southern California, has no memory of his introduction to the racetrack, simply because he was too young to remember it.

“I was a racing fan from a very young age,” he told me on a brisk, blustery morning at Aqueduct, where he served as interim caller this fall before moving to the West Coast for good. “My dad used to take me to the track. A lot of people remember their first day at the races, I don’t, because I wasn’t talking yet. But as soon as I was able to go out to the races, it became my favorite sport by far. We had a lot of sports teams with the Rams, Lakers, Dodgers. I couldn’t care less. I wanted to go out to the track.”

The young Mirahmadi was quickly enamored not only with the sport, but the man in the skybox narrating it for the masses.

“I very early in life became fascinated with the announcer,” he said. “We had Harry Henson at Hollywood Park. We had the great Dave Johnson at Santa Anita. And Harry also called down at Del Mar. I loved their voices.”

Mirahmadi was something of an impersonator, learning how to imitate voices even as a child. Since he and his father, an avid bettor if not a die-hard racing fan, were at the track every week, it only made sense that he’d pick up on how to mimic his favorite racecallers.

“I just started imitating them and enjoying them,” Mirahmadi said. “But it was never something where I actually said, ‘OK, I’m going to be a track announcer. I actually wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid. Then later, I thought maybe a pharmacist because I worked at a pharmacy.”

Things changed for Mirahmadi when Trevor Denman started calling SoCal races in 1983. Denman, his favorite of all the announcers, took part in a radio call-in show from Santa Anita that had Mirahmadi plugged in essentially nonstop.

“It got to the point where, even though it used to be social, you go with buddies to the track, I couldn’t care less if my friends are with me anymore,” he remembered. “I had my headphones. Trevor would come on a little before the race, explain what he thought about how the race would develop. Who looked well on the track. Then he would call the race. I used to call and imitate Trevor’s style, and sometimes before a race, I’d give my opinion, and I’d call it as Trevor for the fans. We’d have some fun.”

In 1992, Mirahmadi was 25 years old and decided he didn’t want to do what he was doing–advertising sales. He called up Hollywood Park and got the track president on the line.

“I just picked up the phone,” he said. “It was instinct. I was a salesman, so you know how to get to the guy. I told him who I was and that I could imitate announcers, that I could imitate Trevor. I sent him a tape and kept following up. Eventually, he invited me to call two races into a tape recorder in the press box.”

That was the first time Mirahmadi had ever called a race with binoculars. His hands were shaking. He called the races in two different voices. Then on Christmas Eve, closing day, he was brought back in to call a race live.

“I still can’t believe the way it happened because if I don’t get him on the phone that first time, I probably never call him again,” he said. “And if I don’t go and do that, and experience that adrenaline, [my career] never happens. So I just think it was meant to be.”

Mirahmadi got his first full-time announcing job at Hialeah Park in 1996. He subsequently spent time calling Turf Paradise, Louisiana Downs and Oaklawn. He picked up his most high-profile gig in 2015, replacing Travis Stone, who in turn had replaced Larry Collmus, at Monmouth Park. That winter, Denman announced that he was retiring from calling Santa Anita, and the track held a public audition to find its next voice. Mirahmadi left his steady winter perch at Oaklawn to go after his dream. The track eventually picked Michael Wrona.

“I wanted to put all of my eggs into that basket, and it didn’t work out at the time,” he said.

That summer, Mirahmadi was back working at Monmouth when he started feeling stomach cramps.

“I went in and called and I was really wincing in pain, it was really bad,” he remembered. “I didn’t know I had that kind of threshold for pain.”

The doctor thought he might have diverticulitis, told him to take Pepto Bismol, drink some Gatorade and keep in touch.

“The next day, I was really having problems,” he recalled. “I said, ‘As long as I get through this day, I’ll just rest for a couple days.’ About the sixth or seventh race, I misidentified two horses in the race. After the race, the phone rang, and [the doctor] said, ‘That’s it, you’re coming to the hospital with me tonight.'”

Mirahmadi’s cancer was discovered that night. It was so bad that the hospital couldn’t even do a colonoscopy because they were worried his colon was going to explode. Instead, they performed a 5 1/2-hour, emergency surgery the following day. Six weeks later, he had a second surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. It was a dark, scary time, but Mirahmadi’s faith and the support of his peers and fans helped him through.

“The response from the racing world, everyone just showed their love and care for me,” he said. “I believe in the power of prayer. I know there were a lot of prayer groups working for me.”

Mirahmadi is now cancer-free, having had his annual scan this summer. There isn’t much better news one can receive after going through what he did, but that news came, in the form of an announcement in late November that, at long last, he was returning home to be the voice of Santa Anita.

“Track announcing is a labor of love,” he reflected. “I’ve traveled now for 22 years around the United States, away from my home in California, to do this. I’ve maintained other jobs, because I’ve had very limited years where I actually worked year-round announcing. Santa Anita is, to me, everything. It didn’t happen the way I thought it would, so for it to then come like this, it’s the grace of God. That’s the only way I can really describe that. It’s hard to comprehend.”

The truth is, Mirahmadi has more than earned this opportunity. He picked up the phone in 1992. He perfected his imitations. He hustled, and bounced around, and never lost his enthusiasm for the sport, whether he was calling a $5,000 claimer or a Grade I. And he beat cancer. Santa Anita, his dream job, is the reward for his perseverance.

“Every day is a holiday,” he said. “It’s like a video game. I got bonus time. Sometimes things are just meant to be, and we can’t control the way they happen. But it’s a gift. They call Santa Anita ‘The Great Race Place.’ I refer to it as ‘The Greatest Race Place.'”

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