‘The Boss’ did things his way
Like George Steinbrenner in baseball and Bruce Springsteen in rock music, Charles J. Cella was known simply as “The Boss.”
Like John F. Kennedy in the White House, Cella surrounded himself at Oaklawn Park with the best and the brightest in thoroughbred racing and reached for the stars. That sons John and Louis continued the family tradition as fifth-generation racing executives pleased their father no end.
Thoroughbred racing changed significantly in Cella’s half-century on the job, going off in directions that he might have disdained but grudgingly accepted. With Oaklawn imperiled by racetracks and gaming centers in other states, Cella said once he would rather close the track than convert it into a casino. Yet, Cella lived to see it become Oaklawn Racing and Gaming (note the order), personal misgivings notwithstanding.
Even during its first boom period in the early 1980s, Oaklawn long raced six days a week with the barest of wagering menus — win, place, show and an early daily double. Like other tracks, Oaklawn scaled back on dates with a shorter schedule and Sunday racing as concessions to the horse player.
A racing purist if ever one existed, Cella came to allow most of the wagering options found at an average track. Today’s Oaklawn patron can play an exacta, trifecta and superfecta on most races and branch out into pick-threes, pickfours and pick-fives. And not only on the live product but full cards at tracks across the country.
Oaklawn rolled with the flow concerning medication, lifting a ban on the raceday use of Lasix to control bleeding in thoroughbreds while safeguarding itself in the ongoing battle between racing and chemistry.
But for most of his tenure, Cella outlawed “baby racing” at Oaklawn, considering it imprudent to race listed 2-year-olds in the winter and early spring.
Cella surrounded himself with like-minded thinkers, bringing in W.T. Bishop, “the man who built Keeneland,” as general manager after the death of J. Sweeney Grant to continue racetrack expansion. Eric Jackson, Bishop’s successor as GM, supplied the economic know-how necessary to keep Oaklawn going.
Cella counted among his close friends Keeneland’s James E. “Ted” Bassett; J.B. Faulconer, Keeneland’s first full-time publicity director and credited with starting the Eclipse Awards; and Arlington Park owner Richard L. “Dick” Duchossois, holder of two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart and still vital at age 96.
Regarding Cella and the press, it was written here once, with no malice intended, that “most of his favorite sportswriters are dead.”
Cella endowed a four-year scholarship Vanderbilt awards
annually to an incoming first-year student who intends to pursue a career in sportswriting. Hot Springs native and Lakeside High graduate Dan Wolken, now at USA Today, is among the recipients of the Fred Russell-Grantland Rice Scholarship for Sports Journalism, named after two Vanderbilt alums whose writing Cella admired and friendship (especially Russell’s) he treasured.
On his annual pilgrimage to Oaklawn, Joe Hirsch would meet with Cella and write a series of columns in Daily Racing Form praising the racetrack owner and his dedication to the sport both loved. Years for Daily Racing Form and later in the media relations department, Don Grisham wrote about Oaklawn with a certain elegance.
Closer to home, Oaklawn’s president enjoyed the company of Little Rock newspaper sports editors Orville Henry and Wally Hall. Randy Moss, now a national racing celebrity, launched his journalistic career in the Arkansas Gazette, championed by Henry and Grisham. Moss’ move to the Arkansas Democrat as handicapper and turf writer represented a milestone in Little Rock’s newspaper war, which resulted in the 1991 merger to what is now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Into that gathering of eagles The Sentinel-Record turned loose at Oaklawn in 1980 a green kid from Glenwood, barely a month on the job, whose knowledge of the sport came from reading the racing form and picking up tidbits on weekend forays to the track.
Luckily, I wasn’t laughed out of the press box for incompetence or ruled off the grounds for general principles.
With the help of Grisham and others, I learned to cover a horse race. The late Kim Brazzel, then with the Arkansas Gazette, taught me to ask a tough question. On Saturdays in the press box, I formed lifelong friendships with Little Rock colleagues Harry King, Jim Elder and Rex Nelson. We became known as the Arkansas mafia during Derby Week at Churchill Downs, starting in 1983 when Sunny’s Halo became the first Oaklawn-raced winner of the Kentucky Derby.
To be sure, Cella and I had our differences over things written in this space. The quality of writing, I would like to believe, if not the perception with which I viewed horse racing, improved over the years. In time, our peaceful coexistence grew into friendship with mutual trust. Certain moments with Cella are keepsakes in 37 years at this newspaper.
We last met in April in the Oaklawn press box hours before the last Arkansas Derby Cella would witness. He was losing a battle with Parkinson’s disease, one that had made him a virtual recluse during his favorite time of year. Oaklawn veterans such as myself sensed something was wrong when Cella did not make his annual visit to the press box on Friday of Derby Week handing out commemorative ties to one and all.
While a member of his entourage poured a soft drink for the track president, Cella and I embraced as if both knew there would not be a next time. Wherever people are talking horses, “The Boss” will be among friends.