Page 122 - Speedhorse July 2018

When Shu Shu left that gate, she could really Horace Hamilton from Boling, Texas, raised Archie said, “Well, hell, if we’re going to run
shake it down that track, and Kopecky knew it. After all, he had raised her. Her mama, Baby Doll, was a producer.
This 1942 Joe Bailey mare foaled 13 good offspring. Raymond had leased Flying Bob and Shu Shu Baby Doll was his get. Only days after she was foaled in 1946, Flying Bob died, so Kopecky bred his mare to one of the old horse’s best sons, Bob Randle, and got Lady Wright, a big, strong mare who was
a real sprinter that knew her way to the finish line, too. Lady Wright’s full brother was Sweetman.
“That little ol’ screwtail hoss won more money for me than any other I ever had,” Kopecky recalls. He won for a heap of folks, apparently, because Sam Raspberry of Older, Louisiana, would put up just any amount of money a man wanted to run for
on this colt. Jack Of Diamonds was another full brother. The dam of Mr. Michael, the ROM race colt by Glory Be Good that Kopecky is now standing is Too Shu Baby, also out of Baby Doll and sired by Panama Ace. But of all of Baby Doll’s get, Kopecky ran the AAA stakes winning Shu Shu Baby Doll the most. She was a whale of a matched race horse, and from 1948 until he sold her in 1956, she ran innu- merable races and stacked up the jingles for Kopecky and her fans. She outdistanced such horses as Pretty Boy, Jennie Lee (dead heat), Slow Motion, Flicka, Chipper H, Poor Boy, and Red Chick W. Raymond would run her at any and all comers.
It was back in 1949 that Shu Shu outran Jay Joe and then took on Pretty Boy, the 1946 colt by Blob (TB) out of a mare by Dark Vision (TB). As Kopecky recalls...
Jay Joe was out of Rosedale, a mare by Flying Bob and Joe Louis was his daddy.
him. Hamilton was running a liquor store in Wharton at this particular time. He called me and said, “When you get ready to run that damn dog you’ve got, come on down here.”
I said, “I’ll be down there tonight!”
If he wanted to run Jay Joe and Shu Shu, I was ready. So Tuck Banker and I went down to the liquor store there in Wharton, and we sat there and drank whiskey and talked, and the drunker Horace Hamilton got, the faster Jay Joe could run. The day of the race, which was run at Burr between Iago and Wharton, I out- ran him 30 yards running 330 yards. When the race was over, Mr. Banker offered me $10,000 for Shu Shu Baby, but I turned him down. Look at how much fun I had with her!
Bob Boyd was a race horse man from around Wharton, and he said, “Let’s load that mare up and go to Oak Hill and get up a race.” In on the race was a fellow named Mosely, who ran a cafeteria in Austin, and Mr. Banker and Horace Hamilton, who I had just beaten out of a bunch of money. So, Boyd and I took off and went to Oak Hill right out of Austin. Archie Morgan and his friends had just bought Pretty Boy to outrun Miss Princess, and we wanted to run Shu Shu at him.
We put Shu in a stall for a night while we got the race up. I was staying with my mare, so
I was laying covered up in the hay where I could hear everything that was said. I heard Archie Patton and Bob Boyd matching that race. Archie said, “How much do you want to run for?”
Bob Boyd was scared to tell him too much, so he said, “What do you all generally like to run for?”
a horse race, we’re going to make it interesting!” Bob said, “I don’t know how much money
this old boy’s got,” meaning me. It liked to have made me jump out from under that hay! “He’s not got much sense, but I’ll tell you one thing, I saw a bootle on him the other day.”
He said, “Reckon would he run for $5,000?”
Boyd thought for a minute. “I’d rather see him run for $2,500.”
“We’re going to have to put up a forfeit.” Well, Bob Boyd got to squirming, because I
had the money under the hay with me. Old Archie said, “Well, Kopecky might be back here directly, and you say he’s got some money. Let’s run down to the café and wait for him.” There was a café right there close by Archie Morgan’s track there at Oak Hill, so they got up and went to the café. Then I came out from under the hay. I got my money figured out, and I could run for $2,500 and put up the earnest money. So, I called Horace Hamilton and Mr. Banker and the whole outfit and told them I had it on, and they came up there the next Sunday and
we ran the race. She Shu outran Pretty Boy, but there was quite a bit of arguing there about the race and the win photo was bad.
So, Archie Patton said, “Well, let’s just wait a minute now. This is my track, and I’m going to see that everybody gets justice.” So he went up and got another strip picture and brought it back over to where we all were. “Three feet is too damn much for a dead heat on my track!” We didn’t have any trouble get- ting our winnings. Archie Patton was holding the money, and he wasn’t to play with.
Sweetman, a half-brother to Shu Shu Baby Doll, won at Arrowhead Park in 1950. Winner Lady Wright, 1/2-sister to Shu Shu Baby Doll & full sister to Sweetman.
120 SPEEDHORSE, July 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM NOVEMBER 1974 ISSUE