Jay Hovdey catches up with Rasi Harper and Maurice Davis, the team behind ‘The Real Players Inside The Backstretch’ racing channel, a hit on Youtube and Facebook.
USA: Outside their immediate circle of family, friends and racetrack co-workers, chances are the names of people like Edmund Pringle, Phillip Scott, Paul Barone, Penny Gardiner, Kortez Walker, Artemio Rodriguez and Robert Leavell would never see the light of day.
But now, that has changed.
The videography team of Rasi Harper and Maurice Davis has spun from whole cloth the internet destination called The Real Players Inside the Backstretch, inspired by a desire to tell the stories of the people who put in the long hours and the hard work to keep the horses happy and the game chugging along.
Like any creative producers of a successful reality show, Davis and Harper offer up a tossed salad of guest stars, from bonafide racing celebrities like Bobby Flay and Eclipse Award-winning photographer Barbara Livingston to entertaining regulars with a bounty of stories to share, among them the retired jockey-turned-trainer Robbie Davis and the formidable horseman Roy Seales, who seemingly has been everywhere worth going and done everything worth doing.
Output from The Real Players Inside the Backstretch can be found at their Youtube channel as well as on their Facebook page. The sites are currently populated by more than 100 video interviews, with more always on the horizon.
A kind of benevolent ambush
Their video technique style is often a kind of benevolent ambush, as Davis and Harper appear seemingly from out of nowhere to waylay the unsuspecting with a handful of questions designed to pry open memories never before committed to anything but wistful conversation.
Now, as the sport shrinks and mutates from the glories of days gone by, those memories are being recorded for a posterity that someday will be appreciated beyond words.
Davis and Harper don’t see themselves as trained historians, but more like evangelicals gathering the faithful to testify before a grateful congregation. At least, that’s how their interviews sometimes feel.
There are origin stories like that of Saudia Burton, who tells the camera: “One time I was at Aqueduct when I should have been in school. And I met Allen Jerkens coming back from the paddock. And I asked him for a job. The rest is history.”
There is wisdom from someone like Leroy Ross – ‘Big Ross’ – who chose a racetrack job with Woody Stephens over life on the streets of South Carolina. When asked how people in his line of work can handle the grind, Big Ross replies, “All you got to do is keep thinking, ‘you got to eat.’ And if you don’t get up and do it, somebody else will.”
Honest-to-goodness tears
And there are honest-to-goodness tears from a man like Cleveland Johnson, who got his first racetrack license at age 15 in 1965 and now trains a small string. Asked to recall great black grooms of his lifetime, Johnson can only lament: “Those guys who came up with me, they never had the opportunity I got now. What is it, maybe one per cent trainers are black? That ain’t right.”
Harper and Davis are master barbers who own a shop in Schenectady, a town just to the south of Saratoga Springs in New York state. The shop is called Boss Builders & Outreach Barbershop, located on State Street, and rapidly becoming a neighborhood mecca for both video talent and world-class tonsure.
Saratoga racetrack has been the scene for most of their videos, although they have ranged to Belmont Park, Gulfstream Park and Churchill Downs; they are making plans for a trip to Santa Anita Park in March.
Davis is the ‘horse guy’ whose encyclopedic knowledge of the sport’s history helps give the team a credibility beyond their good intentions.
“My stepdad, who raised me, worked for the Kellys, Roger Laurin, Steve DiMauro, Jimmy Conway – a lot of the old outfits,” explains Davis. “I was out there in the barns with horses from probably age four.
“When we worked in a shop in Saratoga and cut hair for a lot of trainers and racetrack people, he would see the passion, how much fire there was for working with the horses,” he goes on. “He [Harper] said: ‘Hey, we can talk about this’. Then God gave us a vision to go out and talk to the people on the backstretch, show how much they matter, how they’re the pulse and the heartbeat of the whole thing.”
If it appears as if the subjects of their interviews lean toward African-Americans, Latinos and women – newsflash – that is the face of the modern North American backstretch. Inside The Backstretch seems to be tapping into a demand for a one-stop resource displaying such a celebration of diversity.
“I see it every day,” says Harper. “I’ve got people reaching out from all over the world about this content. The analytics on the page have been going up and up and up. Facebook just opened up so we can get subscribers now.”
Harper handles the camera and asks the questions with backing from Davis, questions that always get around to what the people in the stalls and the shed rows mean to the game. For Inside the Backstretch that is at the heart of the matter.
‘There's nobody too big or small’
“My approach is really cold, man, real time, no setup,” Harper says. “For the most part everybody wants to tell their story. There’s nobody too big or too small, once they know what we’re about, who isn’t game for it. And as people see our work, we’re building more and more trust.”
Davis and Harper have included a handful of familiar names among their interviews, among them trainers Bill Mott, Ken McPeek, Chad Brown, Brad Cox, Rick Schosberg and Shug McGaughey, who had so much fun that the guys went back for more. They even made Christophe Clement smile.
No one is safe from their benign approach. Harper and Davis roam the backstretch looking for likely subjects, asking around. While they were at Gulfstream Park last month, someone pointed to a fellow at the other end of the barn who, they were told, trained the winner of the 1985 Kentucky Derby. They couldn’t get the camera down there fast enough.
“This is the guy who won the Derby in 1985?” demands Harper, camera running, as he swoops in. The trainer, unfazed, confirms the fact, but that’s all.
“How good is your memory?” he asks Davis the Historian.
“I’m gonna tell you who won the ’85 Derby,” Davis shoots back. “Let’s see, 1984 was Swale …”
But even the pros hit a snag. Davis draws a blank just long enough for the trainer to let him off the hook.
“Spend A Buck,” says Spend A Buck’s trainer.
“Oh, my god,” Davis says. “How could I forget that? Cam Gambolati, right?”
A bemused Gambolati smiles and invites them into his tack room office, where he reaches to a high shelf for some vintage Spend A Buck photos, including one of the 1985 Jersey Derby that was worth $2.6 million in purses and bonuses.
“You beat Crème Fraiche!” says Davis, loving the moment as Harper lets the camera roll. Gambolati is impressed with Harper’s recovery.
“You got it,” the trainer says. “You’ve got a great memory.”
So do a whole lot of people no one ever hears from. Until now.
• Visit The Real Players Inside The Backstretch at Youtube
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