The long forgotten jockey

One hundred years ago, the Chicago Cubs won their last World Series for at least a century, Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion of the world and Arthur Pickens won the 34th Kentucky Derby.

At 19, native Ohioan Pickens thus became the second-youngest jockey to find himself in the winner’s circle at the world’s most famous thoroughbred race. Ultimately, Pickens would win 1,055 times in a 22-year riding career that landed him in the Jockey Hall of Fame. Yet today he is largely unknown to even the most ardent racing fans.

That’s why Raymond Davis, a retired federal government manager who lives in Rockville, spent 2½ years researching and writing a biography of Pickens, his second cousin. The former jockey died of a heart attack Jan. 16, 1944, at age 55 in Maysville, Ky.

“I just felt he was underappreciated for his raw talent,” Davis said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it 25 years ago when more of the people who knew Arthur were still around.”

Considering how many jockeys have failed repeatedly to win the Derby, it’s startling to realize Pickens did it in his only try. Much of his career was spent riding outside the United States for the Canadian-based Joseph E. Seagram Stable.

Over the years, Pickens recorded many significant victories. During a span of six days in May 1916, he won the King’s Plate Stakes and three other major stakes races at Toronto’s Woodbine Park — an unprecedented feat. Other notable triumphs included the Long Beach Handicap in Jamaica, N.Y., (1917); the first running of the Grand National Handicap at Havana’s Oriental Park (1920); and the D&C Handicap in Windsor, Ontario (1922).

There’s little doubt, though, that the Kentucky Derby victory was his biggest. It came aboard a long shot named Stone Street on Tuesday, May 5, 1908 — 100 years ago today on a wet and muddy day at Churchill Downs.

How long ago was that? One publication described an “overflow crowd of 15,000” — about one-tenth of Derby throngs nowadays — and the exciting victory was worth a relatively minuscule $4,500 to owners C.E. Hamilton and John Hamilton. The winning time was a plodding 2:15 1/5, slowest ever in the race.

Chances are Pickens didn’t care.

“It was an easy race for me,” he told reporters afterward. “I was satisfied after I had ridden a quarter-mile that I would be under the wire at the finish line ahead.”

And so he was by three lengths. The official chart put it this way: “Stone Street, favored by the [sloppy track] and in prime condition, ran the best race of his career. … He followed Banbridge close up to the three-quarters post, where he went into the lead and easily held [off] the others for the rest of the trip.”

While most spectators shredded their stubs in disgust, 81 must have flung their hats heavenward by way of rejoicing. That’s how many bettors plunked down the minimum $5 pari-mutuel bet on Stone Street to win at odds of about 23-1, meaning each collected $123.60 — a nice payoff back then even for the landed gentry.

The reappearance of 11 pari-mutuel machines at the track was noteworthy in itself. They had been scrapped in the 1880s because of mechanical failures, forcing bettors to consort with often unsavory bookies. Now bookmaking had been declared illegal in the state and its perpetrators had retreated, always a welcome development.

Communications being what they were in 1908, Pickens’ family didn’t learn he had won the Derby until the Sunday newspaper arrived. When they attended church later that morning, the pastor announced it to the congregation — much to the displeasure of his grandmother, Millicent Hudson, who disapproved of gambling.

Pickens continued riding despite several serious injuries until retiring at age 41, then kept his hand in the sport by working as a trainer and jockey’s agent.

Author Davis, now 86, first remembers meeting Pickens at a family Christmas gathering when Ray was about 10. In his biography, Davis recalls “Arthur’s likable personality made him a family favorite, and I held him in the highest esteem.”

Apparently, however, the Depression helped turn Pickens into a financial loser. Davis tells how Arthur visited the family’s home in the mid-1930s and borrowed $10 so he could travel to Baltimore, where he had a job working for a stable at Pimlico.

“Look around here, Dad,” he told the grandfather who had helped raise him. “How many rich jockeys do you see?”

But when Pickens died at his home in 1944 following a second heart attack within 24 hours, some friends might have recalled words once spoken by grandfather James Hudson: “Arthur couldn’t have been anything but a jockey.”