IN MEMORIAM...Joe Hirsch

I met Joe Hirsch for the first time at the 1969 Travers in Saratoga. Woodstock raged in the downpour down the highway but I was there on a mission-getting a job interview with the Daily Racing Form.

Joe had been instructed by editor-in-chief Saul Rosen to take my wife and I out to dinner.
He chose to take us to the Wishing Well, a Saratoga institution, and introduced me around to a number of giants of the game. I was awestruck. Being seen with Joe at a top restaurant was a pretty cool thing to do. You could tie on the feedbag with impunity when Joe was picking up the tab. I chuckled to think the reaction when Joe's expenses accounts reached the desk of the DRF's notoriously tight-fisted accountant Lou Ivorson.

Not many racing scribes could live an epicurean lifestyle on a newsman's wages but Joe made it look easy.

The Form took me aboard a year later and my next encounter with Joe came at the 1973
Kentucky Derby. I was at odds with the bosses at the DRF because I wanted to take a vacation so I could see the Derby. They had other assignments in mind for me, like Omaha, the home of Ak-Sar-Ben. Me, I'm thinking San Francisco or LA.

Right then I got a great offer from a New Orleans bon vivant to act as his stable agent, betting commissioner, and bailbondsman, if necessary during the fortnight leading up to the Run For The Roses. We flew up in a private jet and I was floating with the clouds on the way to the great adventure of my first Derby.

Joe spotted me one morning and waved me over to the barn where Secretariat resided while he prepped for the big race. Joe decided that I didn't have enough on my plate so he commanded that I meet him at Lucien Laurin's barn each morning at six. Joe once again made introductions to all the swells that I was a member of the DRF staff there to lend Joe a hand.

Dinner at the Brown Hotel was on Joe one night and he invited along none other than Red Smith and Joe Nichols, pen name for Joe Fappiano, a columnist of high reputation. By then I was beginning to learn which fork to use in all these fancy joints.

I stood next to Joe on Derby day and watched Secretariat make history. Soon after the DRF and I parted company. But I continued to benefit from his tutelage. He taught you how to handle yourself with the disparate cast of characters that populate racing.

A jacket and tie was derigueur for the turf club where you would find the people with stories to tell. He had everyone's phone number. He called the imposing E. P. Taylor "Eddie" as if they were drinking buddies which, come to think of it, they probably were.

Joe enjoyed a dramatic sense of himself and could be imperious at times. When he landed in Paris to cover Tom Rolfe's run in the Arc he sent a cable to the New York office.

"The Eagle has landed" was all it said.

Joe was very supportive of my shift to television and the bloodstock business. We tried to share a meal on occasion. The last was a raucous affair in Lexington after the unveiling of a statue of Nuryev. The wine and the stories flowed deep into the night. This time we took care of the tab.

The Eagle still soars in the hearts of the multitudes who were helped along in life by Joe Hirsch.

He had no family. The horses and the people that loved them were his family.