- Jeff Berry was a longtime MLB agent who is now a part owner in Kentucky Derby long shot Flying Mohawk.
- Flying Mohawk has raced only six times in his career, none yet on dirt.
- Berry believes that the value of a horse is not in his odds or breeze times, but in the athlete who enters the arena.
When the gates burst open and hooves thunder down the dirt this first Saturday in May, nearly two dozen thoroughbreds will take on the mile-and-a-quarter distance.
Some are the favorites, others are long shots, but only one will be making his dirt debut.
Yeah, you read that right.
Of the six races in one horse’s short career, five have been on turf. The sixth race, the one that helped land him in the Derby, was on a synthetic all-weather track.
By all definitions, he’s a turf horse whose first time racing on dirt will be during the premier race of the most legendary dirt track in America.
So what’s Flying Mohawk doing running this year’s Kentucky Derby?
To understand that, you’ll have to sit with one of Mohawk’s owners, Jeff Berry, a longtime Major League Baseball player agent.
Berry knows all about analytics ― like BABIP and wRC+. (That’s Batting Average on Balls In Play and Weighted Runs Created Plus). He’s watched nearly every decision in the game he loves be made purely on a number, not necessarily on the human behind that number.
He blames Brad Pitt and Michael Lewis, the actor and the author, respectively, of ‘Moneyball’ for the over-the-top craze of every infinitesimal statistic that claims to be the definition of a great athlete.
After nearly 30 years representing MLB players and now serving as a senior adviser to the San Francisco Giants, Berry knows it’s not always the top prospect that thrives.
‘The real value of a horse is in the talent and the toughness, the heart and mind of whoever that athlete or competitor is,’ Berry said.
It’s about the athlete in the arena. And that is a lesson he learned from his dad, Dave, the man who introduced him to horse racing. Those lessons lie in Berry’s fondest memories of growing up in Kentucky, which involve a picnic table by a racetrack paddock.
Dave used to pack the family station wagon and drive the hour from Owensboro to spend summer weekends at Ellis Park, a small open-air racetrack in Henderson.
Dave, Jeff and little brother, Brent, would spend the day hanging out at the paddock, looking not just at breeze times, but behavior in the paddock.
Dave always had his racing form. He was pretty good at handicapping the races. Yet, he’d still send his 8-year-old up to bet $2 across the board. (Betting windows at Ellis Park were a little more lax in the 1970s and ’80s.)
The Berrys would sit on hot, sticky days in full sun at that picnic table next to the paddock of the Pea Patch, known as such among racetrackers because of the soybean field sprouting up in the infield. The small grandstand created an atmosphere like a day at the summer fair.
For Dave, an athlete’s talent was not in a pile of statistics or money spent on their training. As a youth baseball and football coach, Dave’s standards ― even for a sandlot group of baseball players ― was hard work and commitment.
He didn’t want to coach the kid with the most talent, but the one with the most heart and desire. Winning was important, but it wasn’t what drove him. What drove him was instilling a commitment to compete and give your best.
Compete with reckless abandon, he’d tell his team. You’ve got to get mad-dog mean.
‘He coached with a passion, and giving 99% wasn’t enough,’ said Richard Hayden, whose family has been friends with the Berrys for five decades. ‘In practice, every play was 100%. But he made it fun. It wasn’t work. It was something we loved to do, and he helped us cultivate love for playing baseball and playing football.’
As their coach, Dave gave every player the same level of commitment.
‘As a kid, we didn’t recognize what he was bringing to us,’ Hayden said. ‘It really was a metaphor for life. Everything you’re going to do is going to take hard work and discipline. You can win the championship of your little league, be successful in life or have a great family, whatever it is ― but you have to be disciplined and put in hard work.’
That’s what he taught Jeff and Brent to look for in a racehorse. A workhorse. A disciplined horse.
In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, it’s about the human element, or in this case, the horse element.
So, Jeff and Brent’s boyhood conversations at that picnic table near the paddock didn’t revolve around owning a Kentucky Derby-winning horse.
They didn’t even consider a horse that trained at Churchill Downs.
No, the Berry boys talked of owning a horse with heart, even if it was just a $5,000 claimer at Ellis Park.
Now that would be a dream.
‘There are a lot of parallels between baseball, horse racing and even life,’ Jeff told The Courier Journal. ‘Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. But the one thing you can guarantee is that you show up and compete like a champion.’
For Berry, that’s Flying Mohawk, his $72,000 turf horse trained by Whit Beckman.
Beckman, a Louisville native whose boyhood dreams were of winning the Kentucky Derby, said Mohawk has always breezed, worked and trained well over dirt.
‘I’d never lead a horse over there if I thought he was unable to compete,’ Beckman said. ‘This race is just one of those things; there are factors and nuances to it. You can’t predict what his odds are actually going to be when the gates open because your trip is the most important factor.
‘Mohawk is an unlikely underdog. You can’t write him off exclusively as a certain type of horse until we see him, and there’s only one way for that to happen. That’s for him to run and prove it. He’s in the gate. He deserves to be there. He may be a long shot, but this race is open to any that’s in the gate to win. He doesn’t know what his odds are.’
Mohawk’s short career thus far includes just six starts, including two wins and two places.
That doesn’t faze his trainer, who now routinely dons San Francisco Giants gear on the backside, or his owner.
‘The thing of this is, so much of sports in general is overrun with a fraudulent technocratic mindset where data holds all the keys to success,’ Berry said. ‘This isn’t product development. It’s not manufacturing. Because 150,000 people don’t cheer that.’
When Mohawk placed second in March during the 1 1/8-mile Jeff Ruby Stakes, a Grade III Stakes race at Turfway Park, former MLB all-star and World Series champion Jayson Werth, Giants’ President of Operations Buster Posey (a former client of Berry’s), Berry and several other Giants’ personnel went so wild for the dark bay horse’s second place, others thought they’d won the race.
They cheered the competitor in the arena.
‘We’re all doing the best we can. I have my dad.’
Although they now live hundreds of miles from Owensboro ― Brent nows lives in North Carolina where he throws an annual Derby block party with more than 100 in attendance, and Jeff lives in Sarasota, Florida ― Jeff’s ownership of Mohawk (and a large extended family still residing in Owensboro) continues to return the Berrys to Kentucky.
In October, Brent, little sister Emily and Jeff’s family watched as Mohawk broke his maiden ― or won his first race ― by six lengths at Churchill Downs.
‘It’s been such a wonderful family sport,’ Jeff said. ‘It just feels like something special. It’s the Yankee Stadium, so to speak.’
His son, Clark, even designed the family’s silks: A home plate with a B, acknowledging the family’s past in the present.
On Saturday, they’ll all be together in Berry’s box, but their patriarch will not be in attendance.
At 78-years-old, Dave has advanced dementia. He doesn’t remember Jeff owns a horse, let alone a horse that will be running in the most exciting two minutes in sports. Jeff said his dad has asked Flying Mohawk’s name dozens and dozens of times.
‘He’ll remember for a few minutes, and then it’s gone, and the questions come again,’ Jeff said.
But Jeff refuses to be a downer about this topic, even thought when he gave his dad a hat with ‘MOHAWK’ written across it, Dave asked what it was.
‘I’m just happy he’s still around,’ Jeff said. ‘We’re able to take care of him. I don’t sweat that. He’s had a great life. We’re all doing the best we can. I have my dad.’
Now, Dave sits on the sidelines of his grandson Jax’s baseball games, Clark’s lacrosse games or his granddaughter Whitney’s volleyball games. He and Jeff spend weekends watching horse racing on TV.
‘We live a mile from each other in Florida,’ Jeff said. ‘We’ve got an outdoor TV, and we’ll sit outside and watch horses from all over the country. It’s how I’m able to spend an afternoon with him.’
They’ll be watching a race from Keeneland or Churchill. Someone will ask, what’s your favorite track?
Dave will say, ‘What do you mean? Ellis Park.’
Last summer, on July 5, it was Jeff and Brent who drove Dave the hour from Owensboro to Ellis Park during a family weekend. They sat at a picnic table, not so close this time to the paddock. Dave walked up to the rail and watched the horses go by.
In the world of horse racing, the most valuable quality is often the unseen.
‘You don’t in any sport know who the winner is,’ Berry said. ‘It’s why you play the game. It’s why you run the race.’
On Saturday, every horse will face something when running a mile and a quarter in front of thousands.
And one will be doing it on dirt for the first time, relying on the intangible stat that has driven Dave Berry and his sons for decades.
Strength of heart.