SOUTH SIDE TO BACKSIDE

BY JEFF JOHNSON

As a boy, Ken Spraggins spent nine months a year on the hardscrabble south side of Chicago. In the summers, he discovered his passion on the riding trails of pastoral central Illinois.

"My uncle had a farm in Momence, near Kankakee, and my brother and I would go out there in the summertime when school was out and stay out there the whole summer," he said. "We just fell in love with the horses, and we’ve been around horses all our lives."

If Spraggins had been proficient at riding bulls and bucking broncs, he might not have found his way to the racetrack. But the competitive drive that made him a star wrestler at Harlan High School did not help hum on the rodeo circuit, where he said, "I ate so much dirt I could have planted a garden. It just wasn’t for me."

Spraggins has found a way to turn his passion into a profitable occupation. At age 42, he’s a successful Thoroughbred owner/trainer/breeder on the Chicago-area circuit, developing modestly bred animals into stakes winners.

For those who can’t put a face to the name, Spraggins is the guy who hangs around the paddock a lot, bearing a striking resemblance to Chicago Bears Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary, only taller and with a more prominent jawline. His latest triumph is the 3 year-old gelding Wiggins, a favorite for Illinois-bred Horse of the Year. Wiggins no longer resides in Spraggins’ barn, but each passing success is further proof of the horsemanship of his breeder and first owner and trainer.

Spraggins’ biggest achievement through, is just making it as a full-time horseman, period. Unlike other athletes who parlay fame and glory into lucrative off-the field business opportunities, the two-time city and sectional wrestling champion who placed fifth in state, has little besides trophies and satisfaction to show for his accomplishments. The strong, determined young man joined many thousands of his fellow south siders in the mills, landing a job at Modern Drop Forge in Blue Island, where he molded parts for motorcycles and airplanes.

Meanwhile, he began working with Quarter Horses. Another uncle owned a string and Spraggins, who wrestled at 145, 155, and 167 pounds would match-race them – and win. "We were beating everybody, we had really n ice horses down on the farm," he recalled. "And then my other uncle purchased racehorses and started training and said, "Leave that stuff alone and come to the track and help me." So I’d go out to the racetrack and gallop horses for him or groom or whatever. We started out at Balmoral; he had cheap horses."

He was still a long way from turning racing into a business. He learned to sleep in shifts, with a back-breaking schedule of going to the track in the morning, returning to his Hickory Hills home for a couple of hours rest, working 4:30 p.m. till 1 a.m. at the forge, sleeping a couple of hours, then heading back to the track. And of course the horses needed care seven days a week.

He landed jobs as an assistant with Chad Stewart, George King, and Tony Granitz, "an older guy, a middle guy, and a younger guy. And I was kind of like a sponge-just picked up something from each of them."

And he went to the horse auctions, particularly the OBS sales in Ocala, Florida, where he realized he had a gift for identifying inexpensive yearlings who would go on to win major races.

"He’s got a tremendous eye for picking out young horses," said Christine Janks, who is raising several young horses for Spraggins at her farm in Gainesville, Florida. "I’ve seen a good many of the horses he’s picked out at the sales for reasonable amounts of money who’ve done great things. He’s got a good eye for picking athletes. He’s a very, very good 2 year-old trainer. He gets them to the races and he gets them to win.

Spraggins took out his trainer’s license 12 years ago. "I was scared to death," he said about going out on his own. He achieved modest success initially with horses he raced in partnerships; some with his old pal Eddie Wiggins, "the perfect partner."

"He’s a great guy," Spraggins said of Wiggins. "He never comes out; I tell him what we’re doing to do, I say, "We’re going to sell this horse. OK, "We’re going to buy another one" "OK, tell him how much I owe and I’ll sand a check." He’s the best.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Spraggins trained for about a year for the volatile Frank Calabrese, who in the past three years has rewritten the record books at Arlington Park.

"Everyone who had horses with Frank has done good." Spraggins said. "But Frank likes to bet. He listens to his people, and they say when he bets and loses, he gets mad. He’s ready to fire you. He has to put the blame somewhere, and all his people on the side are pointing at you, the trainer. "Fire him! Fire him!" we ran a horse who was supposed to win that ran second, and the next day he came to the barn and said, "It’s time", He got’em all. I came to the track that morning with 19 horses in training. When I left and went home I had one horse in training.

"At least Frank was a good payer. He got the horses and gave me a check for what he owed up to that day. You can’t complain because he took care of business."

It was a Calabrese-owned first-time starter that enticed Spraggins to break his own rule against buying claimers. He put in a $10,000 claim for a daughter of Meadowlake when his stable was depleted by injuries, and Spraggins reasoned that she’d make a good broodmare if she couldn’t run.

"There were three claims, myself, Mike Reavis, and J.R. Smith Sr." he said, "So the horse was the favorite, she broke off, was sitting good, and turning for home it looked like she was going to go right by ‘em. Then all of a sudden, boom, she went down and broke her knee. So I said, "it’s my first claim. There’s no way I’ll win this shake." So I go over there, I’m confident, and all the people are there and they shake everything out, and they pull out the pea: "Ken Spraggins’

"She has to be destroyed. I had her sold for half what I paid as a broodmare, but we couldn’t save her. That was my first claim and… I won’t say I’ll never claim a horse again, but I haven’t claimed one since."

By the time he had already found "the horse that put me on the map." Hunk of Class, an Illinois-bred, was a massive specimen with some physical defects when he showed up in the Ocala 2 year-olds in training sale in 1995.

"Hunk got outworked in the breeze," Spraggins said, "He worked a quarter in like 24, but he was just in hand. He had a nice stride, a big, athletic kind of horse. I got him for $19,500, but the horse had all sorts of problems when I vetted him out. The vet said, "Turn this horse back." But I said. "Did he scope clean? He said, "What do you mean? He has this, he has that, he’s had surgery already." I said, "Doc, I’m keeping him. I just have a gut feeling." He said, "OK, I’m just letting you know you can turn him back if you want to.’’

Hunk of Class went on to win more than $300,000 and shined the spotlight on Spraggins on Illinois racing’s biggest day when he dead heated with Bet On Sunshine to win the 1997 Arlington Breeders’ Cup Spring on Arlington Million day. The 4-year-old has hurt that fall training for a prep race for the Breeders; Cup Spring (gr.I), in which Bet On Sunshine finished third, and raced only once more. Spraggins wound up giving him away as a riding horse to a woman who promised not to sell him, turning down $10,000 from a horseman who wanted to keep racing him despite his tendon injury.

The loss of a star like Hunk of Class would be devastating to most trainers with small stables of younger horses. But Spraggins never blinked, sticking to his program and avoiding a quick fix via the claim box. "My program is geared more toward babies, "he said. "That’s both good and bad. It’s bad because my stable’s so unbalanced. I have all babies, and my good ones I sell. The ones that aren’t as good, I’ve got to keep them and run them. My winning percentage doesn’t look as good because the ones I keep aren’t as good. I’ve got to keep them and run them. My winning percentage doesn’t look as good because the ones I keep are second-tier kinds of horses. They might have problems, weight on them, shins or something doesn't’ look good on them. But my bank account looks good because I sold some. If you're got claiming horses you can balance the stable a little bit. My owners believe in what I'’ doing, so they'll get babies they like to sell and go along with that kind of deal."

Trainer Tony Granitz, who became friendly with Spraggins when they were stabled in the same barn at Arlington, was impressed with his methods. "He takes care of his horses himself a lot and gives them plenty of hands on personal attention," Granitz said. "He only has a few horses, so it’s not an assembly-line kind of thing."

The word on Spraggins was slower to reach those with the deepest pocketbooks, and his unwillingness to toot his own horn didn’t help his cause. But the horseman thinks his record should speak for itself. "I’ve got people I try to get together and go halves on a horse or something, but as far as going to the track and trying to solicit owners. I don’t do that." Spraggins said. "I figure if owners want to make a change, they know where your barn is located and how to find you. I don’t believe in trying to submarine owners from different trainers. That’s no class. If an owner come to you, that’s one thing. But if you’re going out and bad mouthing another trainer to get his horses, I don’t like that. That may be why I’ve got no owners, but if I’ve got to do that to get owners, I’m never going to have owners."

Janks thinks Spraggins has plenty to offer a patient. Committed owner. "If Kenny had a few owners who would look at this as a five year program and invest in horses for three or four or five years down the road, he could build a tremendous stable." She said. "And he could be very profitable for whatever owners he had. He’s not abusive to horses, and doesn’t wear’em out. Unlike some of the big name trainers, the small trainer has to make something out of every horse he has. He can’t afford to throw any away.

Spraggins has come up with his own plan for evaluating horses at the sales. "When I go to the sales, I don’t look at the book," he explained. "If you look at the pedigree and the horse is bred really good, I can’t afford him anyway. I look for a moderately bred horse, an athletic horse, a useful horse. I watch’ em breeze I watch ‘em gallop out, and if I really like a horse I’ll go back to the barn and watch him cool out. And the next morning I’ll go back and watch him come out of the stall. And if I still like him, then I’ll look at the pedigree. If I see the pedigree’s too strong, I’ll scratch him off my list because I’ll never be able to get him. There’s no reason to waste my time because there are thousands and thousands of horses, and I need to go to work. There’s no use looking at a horse by Storm Cat or Mr. Prospector. I move on. But if I see the horse is by High Brite, I know this horse might be in my price range."

Fellow trainers know that Spraggins’ horses all run with "for sale" signs, and tell him to let them know when he has a good one. Granitz has heard from day one about a 2 year-old that Spraggins had bred himself. He bred his mare Dames Quarter, by Nepal, to a Forty Niner stallion named Cartwright, and named the foal Wiggins after his partner. Wiggins was sent to Janks’ farm as soon as he was weaned, but Janks remembers him only as "a plain brown horse who was attractive but not exceptionally beautiful…he honestly didn’t jump out at you."

But under Spraggins’ tutelage, Wiggins was a quick study. The Illinois-bred was the talk of the backstretch, debuting a 4-5 odds and finishing third. He broke his maiden on second asking, then stepped up in class for the Spectacular Bid Stakes, in which he ran a close-up second. Suddenly Spraggins had a juvenile that a lot of people wanted.

Spraggins had asked $130,000 for Wiggins before the Spectacular Bid, but raised the price afterward. Granitz offered $150,000 on behalf of partners William Pacella, Ronald Schwed, and Joe Rizza, but another group offered more. Still, Spraggins was more interested in seeing the horse get into the best hands, so he sold to Granitz.

"I had my eye on him before he ever ran." Granitz said. "Kenny told me, "You’ll want to buy this horse." I liked the way he carried himself. He was all business and looked good, which is rare for a 2-year old. When we X-rayed him, he had a few things that might have make us walk away from the deal."

But like Spraggins felt with Hunk of Class, Granitz had a feeling Wiggins’ upside out weighed his problems, and his owners agreed. Wiggins finished 2002 by winning an Illinois bred stakes at Fairmont Park, and really blossomed as a sophomore. He won five of seven starts in 2003, including the Round Table Stakes, the Prairie Meadows Derby, and two more stakes for Illinois breds, stretching his tactical speed up to nine furlongs and building his bankroll to $323,474. He’s a cinch to be voted champion 3-year old colt or gelding in the Prairie State and a top contender for Illinois-bred Horse of the Year.

So with his most accomplished horse piling up the stakes wins for another barn, Spraggins must have pangs of regret about selling him, right? "No" he asserted after Wiggins romped home in the Robert F. Carey II Memorial Handicap in early November. "I’m in the business to make money."

While Wiggins represents a triumph for Spraggins’ methodology, the residual value was lessened when Dames Quarter was struck by lightning and killed two years ago. And while Spraggins is philosophical about selling his best stock, he dreams of a time when he’ll be able to say no.

"If I’m financially set and I can afford it. I’ll keep one, but my situation is I’m just a working guy, I do all right, but I’m not in a position to turn down $150,000 or $100,000 for a horse," he said. "You never know what could happen to these horses. I would have loved to have kept Wiggins. I knew he was a nice horse, nice and sound, but I could not gamble that way. You’ve got the money in your hand’ that’s the best way to go."

He has every expectation he’ll be in that position some day soon, even though few African-American trainers have thrived on the Illinois backstretches. In fact, Spraggins is one of just four active black trainers on the circuit, along with Paul Darjean, Adrian Washington and Norm Smith. And Spraggins sees few others being groomed to take their place.

"There aren’t a lot of blacks coming up who want to be trainers or want to be jockeys." He said. "There used to be a lot of blacks on the racetrack when I first started out- gallop boys, groomers- but now there’s like nothing."

While Spraggins acknowledged that the sport has done a poor job of marketing to the black community, he says he has not encountered any obstacles to doing his job because of his race.