The passionate harness racing participant has been the Yankees’ assistant equipment manager for more than three decades.

by Debbie Little

Joe Lee, 45, grew up in New York’s Throggs Neck section of The Bronx and then in Yonkers, loving horses, but it took the New York Yankees to make him a driver.

“We were always at the track as a family,” Lee said. “My parents had owned standardbreds when I was a little kid… My mom [Gail] had a groom’s license as well as my dad [Dennis]. My dad might have even had a trainer’s license.

“I can remember being a little boy and seeing the International Trot at Roosevelt, and then later on at Yonkers, and I thought it was the greatest thing; they turned off all the racetrack lights, and they would have a spotlight on each horse, telling you about that horse, and playing the national anthem from the country that that horse represented. I mean, I thought the International Trot was like the greatest event.

“I was always the kid that was at the rail the last two races, looking in the program to see who was going to be done for their night, and begging them over the rail to give me their whip. To this day, I probably have 250 to 300 whips in my basement. A lot of them have their names on the whips, and if they didn’t, I would write their name on it, and the horse that they drove.”

Lee said getting those whips as a kid were special to him.

“That’s what really made me a fan of the sport for life,” he said. “Bill O’Donnell and Ron Pierce gave me their whip every time I asked them, and [Cat] Manzi, too. If a kid asked Cat Manzi for the whip, Cat threw it over the fence; it didn’t matter how good or bad a night that he had.”

In addition to spending time at the track, Lee also spent time with his dad at his real job. 

“My dad used to be in charge of the visiting locker room in football for the Jets,” Lee said. “I was 7, 8 years old, going with him to Giants Stadium at The Meadowlands and helping him out with the football team. So, if the Jets were playing the Miami Dolphins, I would be an 8-year-old kid on the sidelines working the Miami Dolphins-Jets game doing water and Gatorade on the sidelines, or answering the phones from the coaches that are up in the booth. And they’d be like, ‘Oh, go get me number 82.’ and I’d be like, ’82, coach is on the phone.’

At 15, Lee traded in the locker room for a clubhouse in The Bronx, where he remains 31 years later as the assistant equipment manager for the New York Yankees.

“I just say I’m a clubhouse assistant, because I feel like we all share in the duties of what makes that clubhouse run,” he said. “I work all the home games, so, that’s 81 home games, plus the playoffs, plus I’ll go on a road trip here or there. If they go to the postseason, I travel with them. It’s not my main source of income, but I still go down there because of the relationships that I developed over the years.”

Yankees manager Joe Torre and coach Don Zimmer, like Lee, were huge horse racing fans and would often go to the track together, especially Lee and Zimmer.

“Zimmer would go to simulcasting in the afternoon [at Yonkers], if we had a night game,” Lee said. “His wife would drop him off at the Empire Terrace and I would come from Fordham Prep and meet him at the Empire Terrace. He would buy me lunch and we’d bet a couple of races, and then he would drive with me from Yonkers down to the stadium, so that his wife wouldn’t have to make that trip. And then, if we had a day game, he would say, ‘What are you doing tonight? I’d say, ‘Nothing,’ and he’d say, ‘Okay, well, I’ll meet you at The Meadowlands.’ And after the day game, we would go to the Terraces Restaurant at The Meadowlands and stay all night and watch the harness races, because The Meadowlands, at the time, was racing five nights a week. And if we had a day game on Saturdays or Thursday afternoon, we always went to The Meadowlands afterwards. Zimmer would take off his uniform, get right in the car and go right to the track, and he’d be there until I got there, and then we would go to dinner, and then I would drive him back home to Rye Brook. We did that every day for every year that he worked with the Yankees.”

They also hung out on road trips.

“We were in the World Series in 2001 and we were in Scottsdale, AZ, and we had gotten into the hotel at four in the morning, and by like, 7:15, he’s banging on the door saying, ‘We didn’t bring you on the road to sleep all day. Let’s go.’ And within 20 minutes we’re at Turf Paradise, because he wanted to bet simulcasting on the East Coast tracks.

“One day we got to Turf Paradise and the parking lot wasn’t even open. We’re in a cab and we had to wait for them to open the gates because he didn’t know that they didn’t take the first couple of races from the East Coast. We were sitting there like two bums, waiting for them to open the race track. I went to so many tracks across the country with those guys.

In the mid-2000s, Torre introduced Lee to standardbred owner Sandy Goldfarb. Torre owned thoroughbreds with Goldfarb.

“Sandy knew I was a racing fan, so he said, ‘If you ever want to go to the farm and jog or train some horses, I’ll hook you up with my man Buzzy [Sholty],” Lee said. “So, I said, ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ Because, I mean, I rode equestrian for a long time. I’ve been around horses for my whole life. I show-jumped horses, and I took riding lessons, so, I was like, man, I have to go to the farm and do this, just to see what it was like to sit behind one rather than ride one.”

Lee showed enough talent that Sholty suggested he get a license and by 2010 he was in his first pari-mutuel race.

“I didn’t race the amateurs in the beginning, because I didn’t even know that there was amateur racing,” Lee said. “I didn’t know how it worked, who was running it, who to talk to. Buzzy didn’t give me any of that info.”

Lee joined the amateur ranks in 2014 after paying back the little he had earned as a driver. To maintain amateur status, a driver must donate the 5 per cent.

A graduate of Fordham Prep and Fordham University, Lee has been a financial advisor since 2001.

Although his life is pretty full between his real job, harness racing and the Yankees, Lee said he will never forget what he learned from the greats and will always pay it forward.

“It’s funny, these kids were at the rail [at Freehold] saying ‘Hey, Joe Lee, can I get your whip after the race?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, if I win, here it is,’ and I throw it over the fence, because that could be a kid that loves racing for the rest of his life because of that connection.

“One kid asked me for the whip, and I didn’t win, but instead of going right back to the paddock, I took the horse all around the track again and then tossed the whip over the fence. I just think that I owe that to whoever is at the fence asking me nowadays for a whip, because the pro drivers back in the day did that for me, and that’s why I’m sitting in those race bikes going behind the gate.

Lee said he will never take the opportunities he’s been given for granted.

“It’s the greatest thrill for me every time I go behind that gate,” Lee said. “Every time the [starter] at The Meadowlands, Moe [LaFountaine], says, ‘All right, bring them up. Let’s get them together behind the gate,’ it’s the biggest rush. Every day is like the first race every time I go behind that gate. It never gets old, win or lose.”