TOO CLOSE TO CALL!!
Announcer Tom Durkin’s words met the importance of the once-in-a-lifetime Hambletonian moment. The 1989 dead heat between Park Avenue Joe and Probe in the two-horse race-off remains Durkin’s greatest ever call.
by Debbie Little
The 1989 Hambletonian came down to four words, “TOO CLOSE TO CALL!”
According to former Meadowlands track announcer Tom Durkin, who shouted those words as Park Avenue Joe and Probe hit the line together in the Hambletonian race-off, the race dictated his reaction. Replay here.
“You’re only as good as the races that you get to work with and that was a great race,” he said.
Durkin would know a little bit about top-notch races, since he has called at many tracks over the years, both harness and thoroughbred. He was the voice of The Meadowlands from 1982 to 1990, when he left to be the voice of the New York Racing Association (NYRA) until his retirement in 2014. He also called races for NBC Sports from 1984 through 2010, including the thoroughbred Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup.
Being a consummate professional, Durkin said he spent “innumerable hours” in preparation for the 1989 Hambletonian and thought he was good to go.
“For a race like the Hambletonian, I knew what those horses had for breakfast,” he said with a laugh.
But when Probe (12-1) won the first heat and Park Avenue Joe (2-1 second choice) won the second heat, it was time for Durkin to call his first race-off.
“I never experienced anything like that before,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember exactly what was going on in my head. But I was probably jotting down things to say. I’ll tell you one thing I didn’t jot down was the possibility of a dead heat; that never entered my mind. The odds of that are incalculable.
“Every quarter-of-a-mile is obviously very important, and the fact that one guy is sitting back and one guy’s cutting the mile, that’s what you have to work with and you just stay in the moment and describe them. I’ve always said I have a simple job, to describe what’s going on accurately, and that’s just what I had to do. I mean, I wasn’t really too worried about fill because the excitement was just there, it was palpable. Every little thing took on a huge importance there, so I just had to report on the little things.”
Durkin said at no point did he consider trying to be a hero and call who he thought might have hit the line first.
“No, no, I wasn’t going to go there,” Durkin said with a laugh. “Sometimes, you know, you can tell. I mean, I do have the best seat in the house, and you can kind of tell, but no, that would have taken 10 years off my life. If I’d have called one, I’d have only been half wrong, but believe me, that would have gone on my tombstone.
“There have been many times when I said too close to call and I kind of knew who won, but in that case, that was the absolute truth.”
Durkin said the track was abuzz waiting to see which of the 3-year-old male trotters had won the $1,131,000 race.
But that would take time, because unlike today, they had to wait for a print.
“They took all sorts of prints, not just one,” said Durkin, who had a direct line to presiding judge Hugh Gallagher. “They took a lot of looks at that.”
“But the craziness of it all came afterwards and Gallagher had the presence of mind to go through the fine print of the Hambletonian Society rules to figure out that you had to declare a winner.
“It was arcane, whatever it was, and it had to do with their placings maybe in a previous heat, but everybody thought ‘Oh, they were both winners,’ and then Hugh called me up and said, ‘No, these are the rules and here’s the winner.
“And then, of course, it went to court. So, that absolutely was the longest photo finish of all time, I can guarantee that.”
Park Avenue Joe was declared the winner on Hambletonian Day based on the summary of his finishes in the two heats and the race off (2-1-1 dh) over Probe, whose summary was 1-9-1 dh.
The owners of Probe made an appeal to the executive committee of the Hambletonian Society, and as Durkin said, after two years, the two horses were declared co-winners, although Park Avenue Joe took home first-place money due to his superior race summary.
Durkin said what is sometimes lost in memories from that day were the conditions and the multiple performances of those two horses, including the fastest last quarter in Hambletonian history to date.
“What was amazing was that it was a hot, muggy afternoon in a very muggy place that The Meadowlands is in August; it’s amazing the last quarter they came,” Durkin said. “That’s the most astonishing thing of everything that happened that day was those horses in that brutal, hot, humid place, laying it all on the line.
“I mean, how many miles they had raced all day long and then they were able to come that last quarter in :26.3 with neither of them giving an inch, that’s just unbelievable. I remember the final quarter was astonishing that they could do that. It was really a test of champions, it really was.”
Durkin credits that magnificent race-off with giving him what he needed to make that iconic call.
“When I said it was too close to call, I knew I was speaking the truth,” Durkin said with a laugh. “That hormone, that adrenaline, gets into your neural pathways and you can actually see better and think quicker.
“Like I said, my dictum to myself is to describe the race accurately and appropriately, so, it would be inappropriate for me to downplay the significance of a race-off in a Hambletonian. It was just highly significant, so in a race like that you can pull out all the superlatives you want and still be appropriate.”
With the Hambletonian no longer requiring horses to win twice on the same day, what happened in 1989 will never be repeated. And, although the Hambletonian could end up in a dead heat again, according to Durkin, it wouldn’t be the same.
“Well, if you’ve got 10 horses in a race, I don’t know how to extrapolate that mathematically, but it’s a lot easier to have two horses dead heat in a 10-horse field than to have the only two competitors dead heat; that’s mathematically just incalculable,” he said.
“Everything about that race was astonishing,” Durkin said. “Even the convoluted, winner’s circle situation was ‘What? It’s a dead heat and they’re both not winners? What?’ Everything about it was just unique, you know, just totally unique. It’ll never happen again.”
When asked how the 1989 Hambletonian dead heat ranks among all the classic races he’s called, the answer was easy for Durkin.
“I’ve been asked that question many, many times, and the answer is always the 1989 Hambletonian, and that includes all those thoroughbred races, all the Derbies and all the Breeders’ Cups. I mean that was the most exciting race I’ve ever called, plain and simple.
“And I’m not saying that because you’re asking it, it’s been asked to me by many thoroughbred beat people, and, you know, the answer is a harness race.”
