“It brings tears to my eyes,” said Flakes, better known around the track as “Short Man.” ‘We have lost a good man. It’s not like I’m crying or anything. But you know when you get emotional tears and your eyes get warm?’
Yes, Short Man, pretty much everyone who knew John Shirreffs knows what you mean. Shirreffs was 80, healthy and happy, training a full stable, traveling with client Lee Searing to inspect their young horses in Florida and looking forward to the coming season. Then he fell ill and died, on February 12, a news that splashed like a boulder into the common pond of thoroughbred racing and sent ripples to the furthest corners of the game.
A corner like Swansea, Illinois, just south of Fairmount Parkwhere Flakes retired a few years ago after some sixty years working for trainers like Buster Millerick, Charlie Whittingham, Bobby Wingfield, David Whiteley, Mike Harrington, Lefty Nickerson and Kristin Mulhall.
“I worked for John twice,” Flakes said. “We were about the same age. I’ll be 83 in August. I’ve known John since about 1970, when he was newly retired and working on a farm in Northern California.
“I worked for Buster Millerick and we sent them a horse named Kissin’ George,” Flakes said. ‘A good horse, but he came up there. John had him in the creek, with the water flowing to his knees every day, and we brought him back.”
Flakes was one of the last of the leading black grooms, riders and assistants to keep the Southern California backstretch buzzing with righteous vibrations. In addition to Flakes, the names of Huey Barnes, Eugene McDaniels, Joe Merriweather, Charles Clay, Bill Albritton, Rudy Roberts, Ed Lambert and his cousin George are familiar to anyone who has ever spent time in the best barns.
Flakes was an Arkansas boy from southern Illinois, where he grew up in the town of Centerville, a suburb of East St. Louis, and at age 12 ran for 50 cents a head in nearby Fairmount Park.
“I think I’m back where I started,” Flakes said. “Thank God times have changed. In Fairmount we had white and colored water fountains. The kitchen had a partition: whites ate on one side, colored on the other. They finally put an end to that, but some people still thought that way. John was never one of those guys. To him, everyone earned his way.”
Flakes spent most of his working life in the stables, caring for thoroughbreds from the ground up. He found a kindred spirit in Shirreffs, driven by a philosophy that gave every horse a chance. Some of them were destined to become first claimants; others became Zenyatta , Giacomo and Manistique.
“John connected with horses because he liked them,” Flakes said. ‘He could feel into it. A horse’s first instinct is to flee. After that, anything is possible. Once he starts flying, it almost seems like he has tunnel vision. It’s one thing to recognize that, but John understood it, and those are two different things.
“Not only did he try different things, he was patient,” Flakes continued. “Most horses understand patience. You take your time for them, they understand that.
“We had a colt by Tiznow. Man, that horse would do things. John had Frank lead him around the training track after hours in the morning, riding him with long reins for hours and finally taking him to the races. It was a miracle, John and the horses.”
Frank is Frank Leal, one of several long-serving Shirreffs crew members, including Mario Espinoza, Zenyatta’s groom.
Mario Espinoza feeds Zenyatta in Hollywood Park
“When you talk to guys like Mario and Frank, notice how quietly they talk,” Flakes said. “It’s like talking to John. Most of the guys who worked for John adopted his attitude. I always wanted to be like John: calm, cool and collected. There was a time when I could go off the deep end, but once I was with John, I controlled myself.”
Flakes considers himself fortunate to have done a number of tours with Shirreffs. Visitors often heard the main man call on Flakes to apply lessons learned from his many years on the circuit.
“Oh yeah,” Flakes said. ‘Someone came up to him with something and I heard him say, ‘Find Short Man. He can do it.’
“When Zenyatta first came into the barn, no one wanted that big, ugly horse,” Flakes said, chuckling at the thought. ‘And Mario ended up with her. That was funny. But how many people would Zenyatta have kept going as long as John? She wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years anywhere else.
“We had four or five colts that John would use to work her; stallions that would have competed in stakes races in any other stable,” Flakes said. “We even had a little filly at the time who was almost as good as Zenyatta, named Zardana. She went to Louisiana and beat Rachel Alexandra.”
“There it is,” said Flakes. ‘When you write about John, you talk about how patient he was with his horses. You also have to say what it was like to go to a family’s barn, and we were all brothers. He was a good man.’
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