A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. For sports editor Jeff Lane and me, the two of us headed out I-10 toward Hollywood Park. – Obrey Brown
Jeff Lane, the sports editor and my one-time classmate at Chabot Junior College up in Hayward, and I were on a mission. Hollywood Park was our destination on July 7, 1979.
Bill Buster, of Redlands, had a pair of thoroughbreds. One was dubbed Old Redlands. Since it was Bill’s dad who got thoroughbred racing started, let’s refer to his son as William Buster, Jr.
Cool.
There were a pair of Buster-owned thoroughbreds back in 1979, a filly and a gelding. Incredibly, both would be racing that day at Hollywood Park, a track no longer in existence.
Comprising this two-man sports writing staff of a small-city California daily newspaper in Redlands, we had something on mind that Saturday.
Jeff and I were as sports-minded as anyone – baseball, golf, football, basketball, college and pro, NASCAR, not to mention horse racing, you name it. The main Bay Area tracks were Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows, not to mention a handful of summer fair tracks in Pleasanton, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, Fresno, and Sacramento.
Hollywood Park, though, was much bigger. So many greater thoroughbreds. So many top jockeys. Cash went beyond those Bay Area tracks – claiming, allowance, handicap, plus stakes races. Looking for an angle to bring horse racing to that Redlands newspaper, we’d stumbled upon a story that couldn’t defy such attention.
It was the only way you could sell such a story to local readership. Our newspaper owners, Frank and William Moore, plus its devoted editor, Richard West, had vested their faith in us to report on local events.
We were the second paper on people’s city doorsteps. The Los Angeles Times, San Bernardino Sun or the Riverside Press Enterprise were regional papers. They’d cover professional sports, major colleges and, of course, they had horse racing pages.
For Jeff and I to make this work in a Redlands newspaper, there had to be a local angle. And we’d found one: Old Redlands? There was another horse in that same barn, a filly called Milenka.
LOSING MILENKA IN A CLAIMER
On this particular Saturday, both of us were on a mission to watch Milenka, entered in the first race at Hollywood Park. Owned by Bill, plus his wife, Benita Marie, we were curious to see this race’s outcome.
Milenka won in 1:10.2, ridden by apprentice Patrick Valenzuela, who would go on to have a solid racing career. Just prior to that six-furlong race, the Busters faced sad news.
Rival owner Patrice Bozick claimed that filly Milenka. Outracing Bozick’s own filly, Geeme, a few weeks earlier, he decided to make that claim. Losing Milenka, the Busters had one runner remaining in their racing pedal.
“It took us eleven months or a year to breed her,” Bill told me on Milenka. “Then another year, a year to train her, and then two and a half months of racing. In one afternoon, she’s gone.”
Such were the perils of claiming races. You’ve got to sell at the claiming price. In this case, claiming that filly was $20,000.
“We’re going to try to get her back,” said Buster.
After being posted at 4-to-1 in that day’s morning line, Milenka wound up as the 2-to-1 favorite, that filly beating Hoisty Jen, ridden by Canadian jockey Sandy Hawley. It was Milenka’s final triumph.
“We’ve dreamed about having a stakes winner,” said Buster, noting that Milenka’s sire, Olympiad King, had been a stakes winner in the early 1960s.
A few hours later that day, once the Busters’ racing stable had been cut in half, only one thoroughbred, Old Redlands, remained in their barn.
Returning off a seventh-place finish in an allowance at Hollywood Park, Old Redlands was dropped into a claimer. This thoroughbred had no hopes of winding up in the Kentucky Derby or Hollywood Gold Cup. It won just once in his first 11 races. That win, in December 1979, came at Bay Meadows, a track located about 40 miles south of San Francisco, his final race as a two-year-old.
Buster, whose father was in construction and also a horseman, had bred Old Redlands – sired by Gummo, out of Judena. Gummo had been a decent sprinter.
A couple weeks before Milenka’s win, getting claimed at Hollywood Park, the Busters watched Old Redlands win a 1 1/16-mile allowance race.
Over a month later, he won a starter allowance race at Del Mar. That Hollywood Park win had lifted the spirits of Busters’ trainer, Clay Brinson, who called him a “useful horse.”
Said Brinson: “He’ll win a lot of races if we put him in the right ones.”
The Busters lost Milenka, lost Old Redlands, but held onto a yearling filly, named for Buster’s wife, Benita Marie.
Milenka’s lifetime earnings at $59,600 reached six wins and second on four other runs during 25 races. She tucked five victories and a second place finish over an eight-race span between that July 21 victory and early January 1980.
Yeah, Buster re-claimed that filly, no avail coming on any track – nothing higher than a fifth place finish over 16 races.
Old Redlands rarely saw Southern California tracks again. Shipped up to the Bay Area, where he raced at Golden Gate Fields, just north of Oakland, and also at Bay Meadows down in San Mateo, then onto Pacific Northwest tracks Yakima Meadows and Longacres – both in Washington.
That horse would race 47 times over a six-year stretch – winning ten times with earnings just over $52,000. At one point, Old Redlands won four straight claiming races. By then, that horse had been claimed by another owner.
Very little success came after that Hollywood Park triumph. Third places finishes on a couple of occasions was its best. Old Redlands would have to serve as the honorable mention to Buster’s all-time stable of runners.
What a final race day. The Busters ran two horses – Milenka and Old Redlands – losing both that same day after winning claiming races. Welcome to horse racing.
Later that July 7 race day, legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker booted home his 7,700th career win aboard Parsec in the Hollywood Juvenile.
