Two things about this.
One, why did TVG report the substance as "banned" when it is not banned?
Two, this news prompted me to read my copy of "Dirt Road To The Derby," Baffert's autobiography published in 1999. Here he writes about his first drug controversy in racing:
“The following year (1975), after school was out, I returned to Los Alamitos with a friend, Jim Maple, and we had about five horses between us. My brother Bill also was there. I galloped the horses for Jim, who was a top trainer at Rillito Downs. Although they were his horses, I had a trainer's license at Los Alamitos, so they raced in my name. 1 wound up claiming a horse myself for two thousand dollars and was going to run him back. I couldn't win a race there, and wanted to win so badly before the meet ended. Four days before the end of the meet, I ran this horse, and a guy told me if he gave the horse some stuff the horse would win. I didn't know what it was and I barely knew the guy. At the time, I was sort of like a guinea pig, and he gave it to the horse. None of my horses ever got tested because they always ran so far back. So he gave this stuff to my horse, who still ended up losing, but they tested him on a spot check.
Now the meet's over and everybody has packed up and left. Maple's gone. Bill's gone. I'm waiting for my dad to come and get me when I get a call to go to the stable gate. They tell me I need to call the California Horse Racing Board. I call them and they tell me the horse I ran has tested positive for a pain killer. Well, it was like my guts had fallen out. I was so mad at myself. 1 kept thinking, "How stupid can I be?''
My dad shows up and I tell him the bad news. He was the list*ed owner of the horse, and he goes, "Bob, what's wrong with you?" But he felt bad for me; he knew I felt horrible. One thing about my dad, whenever 1 got in a bad spot, he'd never get on my case. He'd always say, "Don't worry, we'll deal with it." We drive up to Hollywood Park and my dad is trying to think of a story for me. We go before these investigators, and I do the usual deal "I don't know what happened," and this and that. Afterward, they say, "We'll get back to you."
After going back home, I got a letter from the racing board say*ing 1 never showed up for my hearing. They had wanted me to go up to Sacramento because the meet was over. They told me if I came back in January, six months later, they'd give me a hearing. My dad typed out a story for me to tell — It was the last night of the meet, and a lot of horses were shipping out, and I noticed that there were a lot of suspicious characters hanging around the barn. With so many horses leaving at once, the security was kind of lax. This was my story. So I fly to Los Angeles, then on to Sacramento, with my typed up story. My sister Penny lived up there, and her husband, whom we called Happy, was going to law school at the time.
It was the first time I had ever been on a commercial plane. I get off in L.A., where I had an hour layover, and I don't know that they take the luggage from one plane to the other for you. I go downstairs to get my luggage and check it back in, and it never shows up. I start to panic. My whole goddamn story is in that bag. I finally go report it and give them all the information and tell them how important this bag is. Meanwhile, I can't leave L.A. without the bag. They ask me where I'm staying, and I tell them I'm supposed to be flying on to Sacramento. That's when they tell me it's already on the plane. Man, did I feel like a damn moron. What did I know? I grew up in Nogales.
So I fly up to Sacramento and I tell Happy about the fix I'm in, and I explain to him about the Absolute Insurer Rule, which states that trainers are responsible for any drug positives in their barn. And I show him my story. He takes everything upstairs and reads it for about an hour. At the time in L.A., the police were hunting for the Hillside Strangler and it was on the news every night. The next morning at breakfast, I ask Happy what he thinks. He says, "I read everything and I think I can get you off." I just lit up when he told me that. "Yeah, I think I found a loophole in this Insurer Rule," he says. "Just go in there and confess that you're the Hillside Strangler and they'll let you off on this."
Then he says, "I read your story, and, buddy, you don't have a prayer. Your only shot is to say that there was this Mexican guy who vent by the name of 'El Groovo.' And instead of wearing those straps across his chest that held the bullets, he had syringes in there instead. Just tell them El Groovo got to your horse."
Penny got real mad at him for building up my hopes, and kidding around about it. The next day, she took me to the state capital and they told me what I did was very serious, but I seemed like a nice kid. So they suspended me for a year, and made it retroactive. I had already done six months, and I really didn't care. I had been going to school and was*n't training anyway. I just wanted to get all this over with. I asked them if I could at least go to the races, as long as I kept off the backside, and they had no problem with that.
I continued to train horses on the ranch, and my dad still had a few horses in training. We had this barn at the track, and whenev*er we'd haul a horse to the track, my dad would hide me in the trail*er when we came to the gate. After we got to the barn, I'd get out and get the horse ready, and stay in the barn. After we cooled the horse out, I'd get back in the trailer and leave. That's the way it went for the next six months.
While I had been at Los Alamitos with Jim Maple, I met Brad McKenzie. He was living in Cypress, California, and going to college while he was working as a groom for Barry Woodhouse. He was sta*bled right across from us. That was the beginning of a long friendship and some real wild times.”
