As did many Jacobs horses, Affectionately raced in the pink and green silks of Ethel Jacobs, and following the filly’s sixth consecutive win as a two-year-old, Ethel commented on Affectionately’s name:

“This filly is especially important to my family,” Mrs. Jacobs said. “Remember, she is the first daughter of Searching. Searching did so well for us. We were very careful in trying to name her, and we submitted about a dozen names to the Jockey Club before Affectionately was accepted.

One of the names we offered was First Lady. With all due respect to Mrs. Kennedy, we did not have her in mind. We merely wanted to stress that our horse was Searching’s first daughter.” (Nichols)

Proving that this impressive win streak as a two-year-old was no fluke, Affectionately continued her winning ways until she retired at age five; she won the Interborough Handicap in consecutive years, along with the Correction, the Vagrancy, and the Top Flight. At four, she capped a five-race win streak with a win over colts in the Vosburgh, just nine days after she beat ten boys in the Sports Page. Joseph Durso in the Times couldn’t resist employing a little feminist language when writing about her Vosburgh triumph:

Affectionately, a 4-year-old daughter of Swaps, taught eight colts never to underestimate the power of a woman when she won the Vosburgh Handicap at Aqueduct for her fifth straight success.

The battle of the sexes began in earnest at the five-sixteenths pole when Affectionately made her move against E. Day. She caught him at the quarter-pole, took first place moving into the stretch and withstood Braulio Baeza’s driving finish aboard Red Gar.

Baeza had been aboard Affectionately for that sixth consecutive win a few years prior; apparently, he did underestimate the power of a woman, or he might have been on the winner for this race, too.

Known as the “Queen of Queens,” Affectionately is ranked #81 on The Blood-Horse’s list of the top 100 race horses of the twentieth century. Altogether, Affectionately captured eighteen stakes titles, and her first foal was Personality, Horse of the Year in 1970. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989, a year after her dam.

Today’s renewal features no entrants likely to steal Affectionately’s nickname or threaten her reputation, which casts no aspersions on their accomplishments. They don’t have her breeding or her trainer, either. Let’s hope that they do have owners as devoted to them as Ethel Jacobs apparently was to her homebred, aptly-named championship mare. As Joe Durso noted, Affectionately made a lot of people happy:

Affectionately…endeared herself to people on all sides by her victory [in the Vosburgh]. Her owner collected $18,622.50 of the prize money of $28,650. Her backers collected $6.10 for $2. And her jockey, Howard Grant, who had come in from New Jersey to ride her, scored big in his one appearance of the day.

Only colts and their backers suffered.

Serves them right, I guess, for underestimating the power of this particular mare.

Durso, Joseph. “40,105 See Filly Win Fifth In Row.” New York Times. 12 Nov 1964. 17 Jan 2008.

Nichols, Joseph C. “Unbeaten Affectionately Is One of Baeza’s Four Winners at Belmont Park.” New York Times. 18 June 1962. 17 Jan 2008.

Yesterday I wrote about the Hirsch Jacobs family, U.S. racing royalty. Though the Jacobs family frequently bred horses, one of their best stories is a filly purchased from Ogden Phipps in 1955.

Searching (War Admiral – Big Hurry, by Black Toney) was originally trained by Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons and made thirteen starts at age two but never made it to the winner’s circle. She finished second once and third six times. William Robertson tells us what happened next:

As a three-year-old, she resumed her frustrating pattern. Seven straight times she was in the money without winning the main part, and after she finished second five successive times owner Ogden Phipps sold her to Hirsch Jacobs for $15,000. Naturally, Searching won first out for her new owner.

Not too long before this, Jacobs had made headlines when he claimed Stymie for $1,500 and subsequently trained him to a Hall of Fame career, during which Stymie won over $900,000. Apparently for Hirsch Jacobs, lightning did strike twice, because fourteen months after Jacobs purchased Searching, there was no trace of the 0-20 maiden:

There’s a new pet in Hirsch Jacobs’ barn. She’s a 3-year-old filly, and her name is Searching.

When a visitor goes to her stall, she lifts a front foot in greeting and then shifts her weight and lifts the other one. It’s a pleasing bit of business.

Also pleasing to members of the Jacobs family is the way Searching has learned to pick ‘em up and put ‘em down in a race. In today’s Saratoga feature…she won for the sixth time since Jacobs bought her for $15,000 last June.

At the time of her purchase, Searching was a nonwinner…For the Jacobs family…she has collected $22,650 in a little more than two months. (Roach, “Searching, 5 – 1″)

Before too long, trips to the winner’s circle in major stakes races became a matter of course. At three, Searching won the Vagrancy and the Gallorette; at four, the Diana, the Maskette, the Top Flight, and the Correction; at five, the Distaff and the Gallorette (again); at six, the Diana (again), the Molly Pitcher, the Matriarch, and the Correction (again).

On her first victory in the Diana, in 1956, James Roach invoked Jacobs’ success with Stymie when he wrote in the New York Times:

As every racetracker knows, Jacobs is the man who holds the international record for being lucky as a horse-purchaser. (“Searching Triumphs“)

Slightly more than a year after being purchased as a perpetual loser, Searching had fifteen wins, including five stakes races, to her credit, and had earned $144,075.

Two years later, Searching won her second Diana, and by this time turf writers were acknowledging not only her astonishing record, but her personality:

Searching, a little mare with a streak of gameness, became the twentieth winner of the $27,250 Diana Handicap today…Searching weighs only 950 pounds and stands fifteen hands high. She won the race in 1956 and was beaten a head by Pardala last year. (Conklin)

Searching carried the top weight of 123 pounds, giving seven pounds to the runner-up Endine, and eleven to Rare Treat, who finished third.

Between the ages of three and six, Searching hit the board in twenty-five stakes races, making a total of 89 lifetime starts and compiling a record of 25 – 14 – 16, earning $327,381. She bore eight foals–seven winners, three of them stakes winners—and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. Not bad for a horse who broke her maiden in her 21st start.

One of those stakes winning foals was Affectionately, and it’s to her we turn tomorrow.

Unfortunately, all of these Times article require a subscription to read.

Conklin, William R. “Searching Defeats Endine by Half-Length in Diana Handicap at Saratoga.” New York Times. 21 Aug 1958. 16 Jan 2008.

Roach, James. “Searching, 5 – 1, Saratoga Victor.” New York Times. 10 Aug. 1955. 16 Jan. 2008.

Roach, James. “Searching Triumphs By Two Lengths in $28,000 Diana Handicap at Saratoga.” New York Times. 23 Aug 1956. 16 Jan 2008.

Robertson, William H.P. The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America. New York: Bonanza Books, 1964.

Sunday features the Affectionately, at a mile and a sixteenth for fillies and mares, three and up. Named for Hirsch Jacobs’s remarkable mare who was a three-time champion, researching the race has sent me down a delightful road of racing history, to be presented in at least two, and possible three, parts over the next few days. (I know, I know—you can hardly wait.)

In addition to being a record-setting trainer, Hirsch Jacobs owned and bred horses with his wife, Ethel, and Affectionately raced under his wife’s name, as did many Jacobs horses. Hirsch and Ethel’s daughter Patrice also got in the game: Jacobs horses raced in her name, and she married Louis Wolfson, with whom she bred and raced Affirmed.

So racing in the Jacobs household was a family affair, and in a 1961 Sports Illustrated article, Gerald Holland tells the story of the family’s reaction to the breakdown of Derby hopeful Hail to Reason:

After dinner John Jacobs showed some films from the family library. There was Stymie winning his greatest race, the Gold Cup at Belmont in 1947, and Patrice’s Hail to Reason winning his last race before breaking down in a workout, the $135,065 World’s Playground Stakes at Atlantic City.

After the Hail to Reason film, the talk turned to the great colt who, experts agree, would have been a prime contender for the Triple Crown this year. Mrs. Jacobs recalled the awful day when John called from the barn and sobbed, “Hail’s broken down and he’ll never race again.” When Mrs. Jacobs broke the news to Patrice, she started to cry and couldn’t stop for two days. Tommy, in the Army at Fort Knox, Ky. got the news in a telegram from Patrice and he cried “for the first time since I was 5 years old.”

“He was the greatest horse I ever had,” said Hirsch Jacobs. (Sports Illustrated Vault)

Though his race career was over, Hail to Reason recovered and went on to a successful stud career; in 1970, he was North America’s leading sire.

But before Hail to Reason there was Searching, dam of Affectionately; she too raced in Ethel’s colors, and she’ll be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

This post doesn’t begin, and doesn’t try, to do justice to the Hirsch Jacobs legacy; those are stories for another time. Before we move from the Hirsch humans to the Hirsch horses, though, a few more words on Ethel Jacobs, these from Victor Ryan, in her Thoroughbred Times obituary in 2001:

[Ethel Jacobs] made one final outing to the track this summer, on Travers Stakes (G1) day at Saratoga Race Course. As had been her custom throughout her life, she made copious notes on her racing program and dutifully registered the top three finishers and the time of every race on the card.

Age 91, last visit to the track, Travers Day at the Spa. We should all be so lucky.

Holland, Gerald Holland. “sex, Slaughter and Smoke!” Sports Illustrated. 26 June 1961. 15 Jan. 2008.

Ryan, Victor. “Owner Ethel Jacobs dies in Florida at 91.” Thoroughbred Times. 10 Nov. 2001. 15 Jan. 2008.