from Harness Racing Communications, a division of the USTA

Freehold, NJ — Those looking for a hunch bet in the Hambo might like to play an exacta on the barristers. Two horses pointing for the Hambletonian haven’t been to law school, but they do have a legal angle in their lives.

USTA/Ken Weingartner photo

Deweycheatumnhowe was named by breeder Steve Jones for the fictional law firm cited in multiple comedy routines over the years.

Deweycheatumnhowe was named by breeder Steve Jones for the fictional law firm cited in multiple comedy routines over the years. (“Do we cheat them? And how.”) The online encyclopedia Wikipedia evens carries an entry for the fictitious firm, noting that figures as divergent as Johnny Carson, Daffy Duck and Groucho Marx have based routines on the joke.

“I was always a big Johnny Carson fan and I was naming babies around the year he died (2005),” Jones said. “I gave a few of them Carson names; I had an Aunt Blabby, an Art Fern. With Dewey, I picked that name for him because I knew that Ted (Gewertz) and Claire (Chappell), who are lawyers, would probably be bidding on him. They’d bought some of his brothers and sisters (full sister Drinks Like A Fish and half sister Giant Emotion among them). Ted used to own Trolley Square. As it turned out, Ted was bidding against Ray Schnittker, which was good for me. Ray eventually got him and then Ted bought into the horse.”

Gewertz was not dissuaded from bidding on the horse because of his name.

“Everyone knows that’s a joke,” Gewertz said. He thinks the name may have emerged from the law firm of Dewey and Ballantine, whose partners included former governor of New York and presidential candidate Tom Dewey. “We did go over to Ray and say that we’d had almost everyone in the family and we wanted to partner with him. We bought the mare in ’92 to breed to Giant Victory (a Hambletonian winner co-owned by Gewertz) and when Steve (Jones) bought her, he started breeding her to Muscles Yankee and gave them all those funny names. We didn’t want to miss out on the last one in the family (Dewey’s mother died soon after he was born). But we did not consider changing his name. Anyhow, as a 25 percent owner at the time, I’m in no position to tell people to change names.”

Russell Williams, breeder of Clerk Magistrate, has the daunting task of naming 300-plus yearlings in his role as vice president of Hanover Shoe Farms. For that task, he must work within a framework of naming horses with the Hanover surname and a first name that starts with the first letter of the dam’s name. However, for horses he owns himself, he’s able to call upon a broader context.

Virgilio Florentino photo

Russell Williams (middle) with Clerk Magistrate the horse to his right and Clerk Magistrate Craig Smith to his left.

Williams is himself an attorney and in naming Goodtimes winner and Dancer Memorial second runner-up Clerk Magistrate, he looked within his sphere of friends. Clerk Magistrate is named for a college friend, Craig Smith, who serves the people of Massachusetts as a clerk magistrate in a Worcester juvenile court. Williams and Smith attended the University of Virginia together, but attended different law schools; Williams at the University of Richmond and Smith at Harvard.

“The problem with naming horses after friends and their families is that the horses very well might not live up to the challenge,” Williams said. “Not thrilling for the namesake friend. What you must do, therefore, in addition to applying names to the most promising individuals, is apply a lot of names and maximize your chances of having something to talk about. I became intrigued with the job title (clerk magistrate), which reeks of authority and, to my way of thinking at the time, was going to look great in a race program.”

In Massachusetts, a clerk magistrate is a court administrator who also makes determinations of probable cause to issue complaints and warrants.

Smith admitted that prior to his reacquaintance with Williams he knew “next to nothing about the world of horse racing, but now, of course, I am following the career of my equine namesake with keen interest.”

He did attend the Standardbred Horse Sale in Harrisburg, Pa. in November 2006 when his namesake sold for $40,000 and visited the Hambletonian for the first time in 2007.

While the connections of the equine Clerk Magistrate hope to be in East Rutherford, N.J. on August 2, Hambletonian Day, the human Clerk Magistrate will be almost certainly out of simulcasting range. He’ll be vacationing in western Zimbabwe.