The Legend of Zippy Chippy (25 page)

If you win you will be happy.

If you lose you will be wise
.

Anonymous

Felix would wait the rest of that winter and the following summer before he entered Zippy in another race. As races go, the one at Northampton Fair on August 31, 2002 – and I'm not saying Zippy was the sole source of racetrack humor – was a laugher.

Sir Jouncewell, a horse that had never won before and had seldom been out in front of anything except his own exercise pony, went wire to wire. Never relinquishing the lead and paying $63.20 on a two-dollar bet, Sir Jouncewell showed what can happen when a career maiden finally breaks his cherry at long odds. A horse named Mecke Mouse hauled his big, flopping ears to the finish line twelve lengths ahead of Zippy Chippy. The only horse Zippy beat was King's Marquee, whose jockey eased him up at the third turn so that he failed to even finish. But the real kicker was that Zippy lost by twenty-four lengths to a horse named Mr. Peanut. That had to hurt. Somebody should have called foul on the name alone and ordered an allergy alert. No stranger to the bad name game, Mr. Peanut once came in eleventh in a race that included D'Gonne Gonne and Dinky Doo.

To those who bet the horses logically – the same type of people who failed to see the reincarnated baseball stars in the movie
Field of Dreams
– it looked like just another loss for the horse who had never won a race. What they didn't see was Zippy before the race, snorting and shaking and rearing his head like he was ready to go to war. What they didn't see was the same horse that had beaten only one competitor that day come back to the barn and do a little Buffalo shuffle for all his handlers and groupies. His demeanor said it loud and clear:
King's Marquee, my ass! I sure showed that guy!
Of course, he was referring to that one poor bastard who, seeing how far he still had to go to the finish line, faked a coughing fit and quit.

It took so little to make Zippy Chippy happy. Why? Low expectations. With nobody filing his retirement papers, Zippy had the world in the bottom of his banged-up water bucket. The track Zippy followed in life was always fast and firm, even if the race results were a little muddy. The aspirations of his owner and trainer were equally unexceptional. “He break good today,” said Felix of the horse's ninety-fourth loss. “But today is not his day.”

It would take science twelve years to catch up with Zippy and Felix's secret recipe for wellness. A recent study on mood disorders by researchers at England's University College London revealed that people with low expectations are much happier than those disappointed by not reaching lofty goals. The researchers didn't go so far as to claim that ignorance is bliss, but they did show that underachievers are measurably more satisfied with their lives than all those Type A personalities and
Forbes
-listed people who are only too happy to blab about all their winning strategies in their books, usually titled something along the lines of
The Seven Simple Secrets to Success
.

If your goal is to get home from work as quickly as possible while collecting curses and middle fingers from the drivers you offend, then you probably wouldn't be the type of person to bet on Zippy Chippy. But if your goal is to get home safely to enjoy the family around a fire or the supper table, arriving a little late because you stopped along the way to help somebody with car trouble or to rescue a stray dog, then yeah, you would probably drop a bill on the endearing Zippy, knowing that the chances of him winning were remote but that it was possible nonetheless. It was those two-dollar, well-wishing bettors who enabled the horse to have a career as a professional thoroughbred. These people see that, more than a single result or a big score, life is about the race, the journey, the getting there. A slow hand, an even keel, sights set on a big beach ball of a target, can bring lasting fulfillment in life.

I have heard older, successful couples refer to their “salad days,” those early years of beginning a life together, building businesses or careers. Depending on which folklore you favor, those good ol' days refer to the greenness of judgment or the innocence of youth or more literally that period of struggle and sacrifice that came with meals that were more lettuce than meat. But the wistful sigh and knowing smile that come with the memory say that those days, the thin times, were the best times of their lives. Rewards come later, but the real joy in life comes from just being able to stay in the game. Although Zippy's big nose was never photographed hitting the wire first, he did savor every moment of a match.

On September 8, over the same fast Northampton track, Zippy went off at 9–1 and finished fourth by fifteen lengths in a seven-horse field. When the three leading horses began bumping each other in the backstretch, according to the race footnotes, “Zippy Chippy raced wide and never threatened.” Hey, it's a beautiful day
at the track – who needs that nonsense? Zippy gladly took his longevity record and $185 back to the barn. On that day Mr. Peanut didn't just beat Zippy by fifteen lengths – he beat everybody! Yes, in a weird kind of bar-snack mix-up, Mr. Peanut lost his cherry. Adding salt to the wound, jockey Willie Belmonte took Mr. Peanut to the wire ten lengths ahead of the field. Finishing dead last, Timing Perfect's timing was fatally flawed.

Now bested in succession by Mr. Peanut, Unblessed, and Takin' Up Space, Zippy Chippy was losing to some of the saddest names in horse racing. If there was ever a horse named Dead Last that finished dead last in an eight-horse race, Zippy Chippy would have created some sort of calamity in which he managed to come ninth. Nonetheless, arrogantly strutting back to his stall, Zippy always won the postgame performance by two or three lengths.

Track media wondered aloud why Felix was still running what they referred to as his “hapless horse.” They strongly suggested that Zippy was long overdue for retirement. In fairness, although Zippy now had ninety-five consecutive losses, in 2002 the Chicago Cubs hadn't won the World Series in ninety-four years, and nobody was calling for that franchise to be dismantled. The Cubs to this day have a strong and loyal fan base, because, like no other professional baseball team in existence,
they are the Cubs. Allegiance
: a strong word, a good word, that gets so little play these days.

“He keeps going because he doesn't like to stand in his stall all day,” said the trainer, looking at the reporters like they were probably the sort of underachievers who did.
But he can't win
, chorused the critics. Z
IPPO
! L
IKE THE
L
IGHTER
: F
LAMING
O
UT
A
GAIN
, mocked one sports headline. B
EATEN BUT
A
LIVE
: L
OSS
#95, bellowed another. But Felix Monserrate, who obliged when asked to autograph those same clippings, paid no attention to the headlines.

“If you keep trying, you maybe will make it,” he said. And with that, the man who always stood shoulder to shoulder with his horse even though he could probably walk right under him without knocking off his trademark blue “Zippy Chippy” cap began to prepare his pony for career race number ninety-six.

Success is in the trying just as surely as the proof is in the pudding, whatever that actually means. Failure can be as fleeting as fame, unless you have the courage to carry on. You can bury a lot of bad stuff behind you when you're completely focused on the next big contest. That's where Zippy's strength came from: the hope of the next test, the anticipation of another race.

Felix could understand and accept Zippy Chippy's losses, but he could never abandon the prospect of success and the pride in saddling up his horse one more time, chasing that elusive win that nobody but he and Zippy's fans believed he would ever achieve. They were going the distance together, hell or high odds.

So seven days later, over a fast track and under a cloudy sky, in a short race with a small purse, Zippy Chippy boldly went out and put on a very unspectacular performance for his ever-expanding club of fans. With the noise of the fairground's midway drifting over the track, Zippy ended any suspense the contest might have generated early on. Fifth into the stretch, he simply drifted off across the track in a dream world of his own. He finished six lengths behind a thoroughbred who was actually his own age, an eleven-year-old maiden named Quincy Kid. Lots of Power throttled back at the wire, coming in second by a neck. The newspapers enjoyed their usual headline humor: N
O
F
IX:
Z
IPPY
C
HIPPY
H
ITS 96
.

Mike Moran, a longtime sportswriter for the local
Daily Hampshire Gazette
, still remembers the sadness that lingered that day long after the press had packed up and gone home. It was
raining softly when he finally found Zippy in a stall way back of the fairgrounds. “He was so alone,” said Moran. “There were no horses near him, nobody around. There was just Zippy Chippy and two empty cans of Coors Light on the edge of his stall.”

Thinking a change of scenery might mean a change of luck, seven months later Felix wrangled Zippy into his transport trailer for the five-hour trip to North Randall, Ohio. The nearly ninety-year-old ThistleDown racetrack, now merged and renamed ThistleDown Racino, is a one-mile dirt oval close enough to Cleveland that you can still smell the smoke from the massive bonfire that Cleveland Cavaliers fans built in the summer of 2010, using LeBron James jerseys as kindling.

At the new ThistleDown, now owned by Caesars Entertainment, the slots that never stop have revived the track that now offers one hundred racing days each year. Although the glittering casino outshines the one-mile dirt oval, still, they come – the handlers of horses, the jockeys, the walkers, the grooms, the trainers leading their mounts from backside to trackside – mostly for love and what little money they can manage to squeeze from the long hours in this unusual trade that many of them have been born into.

Running in the first race of Wednesday's card on April 16, 2003, the ThistleDown adventure produced a particularly poor performance, with Zippy finishing last by nearly thirty-two lengths. This meant that the winner, Mr. Chris Gibbs, hit the wire, got his photo taken in the winner's circle, and was cooled down, brushed up, and sitting in the corner of his stall reading the
Daily Racing Form
by the time Zippy crossed the finish line. As the trackside wiseass always says, any horse that loses by thirty-two lengths should be clocked with a sundial instead of a stopwatch.

Newcomer Benjamin Cacha Padilla had a nice ride around the track aboard Zippy, and at that clip he was able to take in some of the sights. All that scenery, all that greenery – why not take the long way home? At twelve years old, Zippy now held a record of twelve thirds and seven seconds. By comparison, Mr. Z ran a tad faster in last year's running of the Ohio Derby on the same track and took home a winner's share that was $270,000 more than the Zipster's career earnings of $29,952 to date. The Ohio Derby is ThistleDown's signature stakes race with a total purse of $500,000. Horses of Zippy's caliber have to pay to watch this derby from the sidelines.

Ten hours in the back of a truck for an eighth-place finish, eighty-two dollars, a new record of ninety-seven consecutive losses – who thought this trip was a good idea? Having seen Zippy lose by sixteen lengths to a horse named Dude Anonymous, Felix must have wanted to buy up all the official results sheets and burn them behind the barn. But then, Zippy would have likely enjoyed that, his very own bonfire of the vanities. You just couldn't win with this guy. Headed for home, Zippy Chippy was just four days short of his real day of birth, April 20. Oh, if Mom could only see him now, she'd … she'd probably give up breeding.

Even by Zippy's racing standards, the horse was now officially underachieving, and Felix sensed it might be all over for his boy. Zippy could almost smell the scent of oat bran and mothballs coming from the Old Friends farm near Saratoga Springs, where over-the-hill horses like him went to carpet bowl and guess how many jelly beans were in the bell jar. And yes, he did love jelly beans. However, after almost five months of mulling things over, Felix decided against retirement and brought Zippy Chippy back
to what was now his favorite track, Northampton Fair, the site of some of his best near wins. “He had,” said the trainer, “some really close calls here.”

The handicapper who had witnessed Zippy's running of seventy races at Finger Lakes did not believe that Felix was enjoying the fun the press were having at Zippy's expense. Said Dave Mattice, “I think between races, Felix enjoyed the notoriety of Zippy's losing streak, but when he got him saddled up in the paddock, Felix's aim was to win. He was all business once the game was on.”

Trotting out onto the track for the first race on this balmy Saturday afternoon on the sixth day of September, Zippy looked like he was going to kick some serious ass. His head was high and his gait was assertive as he loped down the track toward the start. Even his companion pony seemed impressed that he wouldn't have to do any Zippy Chippy herding today. Yet many at the track that day believed this would be Zippy's last race. One more last-place finish – or, worse, failure to finish at all – and even the fun-loving Northampton stewards would not be amused.