Jayson Werth: A Home Run For Racing

[Wandering Eyes]

Needless to say, Dornoch didn't look as shocked as Jayson Werth had felt when someone once said much the same to him. But somehow he got the message, because next day he went out there as a longshot and came back the winner of the GI Belmont Stakes.

It had just been the two of them, in his stall, Werth literally giving the horse a pep talk. So he wanted to be a stallion, a lot of pretty mares lining up? Wanted to be somebody in this game? Well, here's how it was. “This,” Werth told him, “is your last chance in horseracing.”

A heartless phrase that went back to a time when he, too, had been written off; when nobody wanted to hear excuses–like Dornoch getting stranded by the rails draw in the Derby–and perhaps even suspected that he was malingering.

After a superb debut season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Werth was hit by a fastball on the first day of spring training in 2005. He holds up the wrist, the bone still pretty messy even now. The medics gave him some routine treatments, including surgery when it stubbornly wouldn't clear up, and told him time and again that he was good to resume.

“Except I couldn't even open a door,” he says. “It was that painful. And they're trying to tell me there's nothing wrong with me. Because all I had to do was get on the field for one inning, and they could send me down to the minor leagues and not pay my insurance. It was a time of ultimate turmoil, just bad, bad juju, bad vibes. People thinking that I was just trying to collect unemployment, essentially. When all I wanted to do was play.”

He played a little in 2005, not at all in 2006. Finally he was released by the Dodgers. For an athlete in his prime, on the brink of stardom, it was purgatory.

At one point, Werth had flown over to consult yet another doctor in Atlanta. On the way, he called home: his high school sweetheart Julia was raising their young kids, suffering in her own way from the whole saga. But it was only because he happened to visit that day, and went to the mailbox when he did, that he spotted the father of a boyhood teammate walking his dog over the street. Werth called out a greeting.

Jayson Werth touches them all following a 2-run home run in the 2009 NLCS | Getty Images

“Hey, Jayson, what's up? What are you doing here?”

Werth explained about his wrist.

“Man, you're still having problems with that?”

“Yeah, I'm going to go see another specialist. This is like my eighth.”

“Have you been to the Mayo Clinic?”

“Never even heard of it.” Werth now remembered that this guy was an orthopaedic surgeon.

“Their hand department up there is amazing. You should call them.”

He gave Werth a name to ask for. Werth ran straight in and dialed the number.

“I don't want to call back. I'll wait. Tell him this is important.”

He was three hours on hold, in total, the first doctor having redirected him to a more relevant specialist. Finally he was talking with Dr. Berger's assistant.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's make an appointment. How about Aug. 16?”

This was May. He thought the Dodgers might get him moved up, but they didn't. Finally the day came. “Well,” Dick Berger told him. “You've got one of two things. One, I can fix it. If it's the other, you'll never play again.”

So they did an MRI, and Werth braced himself for sleepless nights of waiting. But as he left the scanning room, there was Berger in the doorway.

“Surgery tomorrow. I'll get you in early, be there at six. I got you. I can fix this.”

Nearly 20 years later, Werth still chokes with emotion. Julia, too, has her eyes brimming.

“We literally just sat on the phone and bawled our eyes out until six o'clock the next morning,” Werth recalls. “This was the only guy in the world that was doing this surgery, that was identifying and repairing what I had [an ulnotriquetral split.] Oh, man. I mean, I was done. My career was over before it started.”

Not that his comeback was easy, even then. The Phillies had taken him on, but he was rusty and it was only because two of his new teammates got injured right at the trade deadline that he got his chance.

The GM called him in. And that's when he heard those words: “This is your last chance in professional baseball.”

Getty Images

“And I'm like, my last chance? What the ****! I mean, I was just almost Rookie of the Year. I get hurt, and now this is my last chance?” He shakes his head, still incredulous. “So I get two hits that night. Four hits the next night. I end up hitting .420 for August. We run down the Mets in '07, we win the World Series in '08. I don't come off the field for 10 years. And that was my last chance.”

Hence his words to this uncomprehending Thoroughbred, soon after discovering a surprising new stimulus for his retirement.

There's a parallel, after all, between what he did during his own career and the preparation of Dornoch: endless, repetitive honing and rehearsing, all coming down to a fleeting moment of performance.

“That part, I totally get,” Werth says. “They're the athlete. They're the pro. How much work you put into something. Plus the fact that he was pigeon-toed like I was! But yeah, the blood, sweat, and tears goes into it. You get so invested, owning these horses, it's crazy. It becomes as big a deal as when I was playing.”

He had first become intrigued through golf buddies in Florida, who raced the occasional state-bred.

“It's the same, whatever level you've played sports,” he says. “When you stop, you miss that competition. So having a horse leave the gate, it's like you're back on the field. I kind of tiptoed into it, at first, with a piece of some fillies. But all of a sudden it's Tuesday at Tampa Bay Downs, a $16,000 claimer I own a leg of, and I'm as fired up as I get. I'm alive again. I didn't even realize that there was a void to fill, that there was a huge piece of me missing.'”

He was soon raising the bar with R Calli Kim (Revolutionary), whose thrilling off-the-pace style won two graded stakes. And then he walked into a bar at the Keeneland September Sale of 2022.

“Could have gone left, could have gone right,” Werth recalls. “But I saw Danny [Gargan, trainer] and Conor [Foley, agent] and all those guys, who I knew, so I went over and talked. And next thing Danny's convinced me to take 10% percent of a Good Magic yearling they just bought [for $325,000]. First colt I ever had. Looking back, Danny was so full of it! And I was so green. I mean, like we're going to buy one colt and chase the Derby dream? But he even said, 'It'd be cool to have a guy like you in the game, get a celebrity involved. If this horse turns into something, it could become…' Really, become what it has. So he had a vision, and he was right.”

And so the mutual attraction between horseracing and this usefully conspicuous convert–all that hair, all that open, buoyant engagement–began to intensify.

Hoisting the Belmont Stakes trophy at Saratoga | Getty Images

“Fountain of Youth day, I brought Max Scherzer, a first-ballot Hall of Fame pitcher, and some other baseball buddies,” he recalls. “We get a suite at Gulfstream. And R Calli Kim wins a Grade III, and then Dornoch wins, and it's starting to hit me: 'All right, guys. The dream is on.' I've won the World Series, I know what it's like, I get it. And I'm playing big games again.”

The Derby itself proved an anti-climax, but the experience–the walkover, all the rest of it–was indelible. Going into the Belmont, Werth was affronted to see how quickly Dornoch had been forgotten.

“We really, legitimately thought he was going to win the Derby,” he says. “But that one post, he's dead before it starts. Never had a chance. And now he's 17-1, the outcast. 'Come on, this is my guy. Don't trash my guy.' I knew how good this horse was. I believed in him. And I mean, he's like a family member. So that's when I go in and give him a full pep talk. Tapped him on the head, told him, 'This is it, dude, your last chance at horseracing.'”

The delirium he shared with a watching nation, during and after the race, measured the revelation that horseracing had become. If anything, however, too much of a revelation.

“As it started coming together, we thought, 'This is remarkable,'” he says. “My wife's fallen in love with it, too: the dresses, the hats, the big days, events before and after. And we were like, 'This is such a cool sport. How does nobody know about this?'

“I mean, we lucked into this whole thing. I don't think the average American fan has any idea how cool this can be, above all from an ownership side. Because that's where you can differentiate: you're not just sports fans, but sport owners. That's where horseracing's missing the mark. That's how to change and grow the sport, through ownership. Because now these horses become your story, your reality. And you start peeling back the layers.”

For too long, he suggests, ownership has been the preserve of the privileged few.

“No offense, because it's these people, these families, that have stood the sport up to this point,” he acknowledges. “But the sport isn't growing. Why? Not because it hasn't evolved, started to do great things for the people and horses involved, to erase the stigmas. I mean, it's a way better sport than 20, 30, 50 years ago. And my challenge has been explaining that to people. So why is little old me having to tell them all this stuff?

“The industry's done a poor job of storytelling, explaining, outreach. Granted, we've had unbelievable luck in what we've done. But without that success, I wouldn't be here. So that's driven me to see this soft spot: to share the experiences we've had, bring people in. Everybody I've invited to the track, to see a day through the lens of an owner, straightaway it's: 'How do I get involved?'”

Werth is not naïve. He knows that many a novice has had a bad experience, maybe been taken for a ride. But as one who thrived because baseball cleaned up its act, leveling the playing field for those who had always played straight, he implores us to recognize the stakes.

“Without new people coming in, I don't think the sport can sustain itself,” he says. “Look at the industry right now: it's addition by subtraction. We should be gaining tracks, not losing them. Yes, there's stuff that needed sorting, that people are doing a great job to get rid of. But you can talk about the bad parts of any industry. You want to talk about the low levels of minor league baseball? I mean, it sucks. And we're talking about human beings that can talk. So, of course we need to protect these horses that can't stand up for themselves. But if Aunt Tammy, Aunt Sally and Uncle Chad owned a piece, fewer would fall into the hands of people that don't care.”

So what does addition by addition look like? Well, a lot like Icon Racing. While Werth admires the impact of fractional ownership entities, his evolving partnership is pitching a higher level of risk and reward. So far they've raised over $3 million from a typical stake of $100,000.

“But I tell people not to look at it as an investment,” he says. “This is like buying season tickets, and taking your family to Disneyland, and going to Vegas, and buying Lotto tickets, all in one. With season tickets, you have your memories–but that's it. You own nothing. With this, you have all that, too, the great times with your families, the winner's circle pictures. But sometimes–not always, but sometimes–at the end you also have an investment that has value.

“You don't need to own 100% of a horse to get 100% of the experience. I own 10% of Dornoch. Like, it was enough. I mean, it was life-changing. People will say, 'What a joke, the dude acts like he owns the whole thing.' I'm here to tell you that if I owned one percent, I'd have acted the same. That's the point.”

Werth recognizes the challenge, even with $100,000 investors, in competing against the superpower programs.

Werth at last year's Keeneland September Sale | Keeneland

“But so what?” he says. “That's what's fun. We can still play the same game as the billionaires. Sure, there's going to be more people in the winner's circle, in the paddock. So what? Where's the hang-up?”

Werth grabs his phone and holds it aloft.

“This thing should be revolutionizing horseracing,” he says. “You can be anywhere in the world, in a meeting, at work, whatever. 'Excuse me. One second. I got a race.' I want to put cameras in the stalls. So any time of day you can go on your phone and, 'Hey, look at this. There's my guy.'”

This zeal is now being infectiously communicated through a podcast with fellow MLB veteran Shawn Kelley, Off The Rail. Meanwhile Icon recruited six yearlings at Keeneland last September and have further capital for the juvenile sales. That's their trading window, that's putting a team together: horses, trainers, riders, above all partners. Because Werth always relished how a gladiatorial showdown between individuals, pitcher and batter, derived its meaning from the teams around them.

“Oh yeah, that camaraderie,” he says. “I played on so many good teams. There was only one that wasn't, and the difference was obvious: chemistry. We had good players, but didn't win because the inside was toxic.

“And that's the thing about horseracing that's so unique. This whole industry is a team. Yes, everyone's trying to win purses. But we're all pulling in one direction, to not let our sport die. It's been going the wrong way for so long. That's not where I'm going.”

Werth's own journey remains in its early stages. He has been involved barely as long as those cruel three years when he was all but lost to baseball. But this time everything–the emotion, the intensity, the high stakes–have all been positive.

“This is an incredible sport,” he says. “And I believe in it. I think we can grow the sport, despite itself. That's why we're going forward with this whole thing. To show people how amazing, how compelling, it can be. How it can rip your god-damned heart out of your chest.”

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