So Legit So Quick -- Hammer, Family Waste Little Time Leaving Their Mark On Horse Racing

"See that tall fellow there? That's Jerry Moss of A&M Records, and over there is Vern Winchell, the doughnut man." Louis Burrell Jr., older brother of rap star Hammer and head of the family's 1-year-old racing stable, points out the competition in the director's room at Bay Meadows racetrack. "There's nothing I like better than beating corporate America."

Louis Jr. is only partly joking.

On a cold January day in San Mateo, Calif., Louis Jr. and other owners are gathered for the first big local race of the season for 3-year-old colts and fillies. Louis Jr. doesn't need the El Camino Derby's $300,000 purse. None of the Burrells do. They're in this game for other reasons.

Lewis Sr., 52, father of the clan, earns six figures as casino manager of the Oaks, a booming Emeryville, Calif., card club. Chris, 31, is Hammer's tour manager. He's wearing heavier gold and bigger diamonds than most of the Chanel-suited ladies in the softly lighted director's room. Louis Jr., 32, president and chief financial officer of Hammer's Bust It Productions, wears less jewelry but his black handmade Aston Martin and gem-encrusted gold Rolex scream "money" too. And it's understood that Stanley Kirk Burrell, aka Hammer, 30, the biggest rap star in the world, has shared his wealth with the family.

Lewis Sr., Louis Jr. (yes, the names are spelled differently), and Chris are partners with Hammer in Oaktown Stable, a sensational new thoroughbred stable the racing world has greeted with a nervous embrace.

The Burrells move around with a sizable posse. Today at Bay Meadows, this includes Brittan "Juice" Sneed, instantly recognizable as the drug dealer in Hammer's video "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em," and Lloyd Johnson, a gentle-voiced 6-foot-5, 270-pound bodyguard. Several handsome grandchildren, Hammer's sister Deborah and brother Kenneth, and other friends stand around the table, joking, chatting, cheering their favorite horses in the early races.

As is increasingly the case these days, Hammer is not with the family. He's in Los Angeles, preparing for the American Music Awards show. But the Burrell clan still stands out in the director's room, which is reserved for the owners of horses in the featured race.

This room sits atop a hierarchy that recalls racing's Old World origins. At bottom are the men in the grandstands, mostly Asians and Hispanics at Bay Meadows. For a few dollars more, patrons sit in the slightly more comfortable clubhouse, where dress is still casual but the crowd is whiter and more middle-class. Up another notch, the turf club is favored by horse owners who pay several thousand dollars to have a table for the season.

At the apex, the director's room is entered by invitation only. Here the view is grand, but it's the scent of expensive perfume and old whiskey that conveys, more than anything, a sensation of privilege and wealth. And except for an occasional waiter passing through, the Oaktown Stable party are the only blacks in the room, a fact that has not escaped their notice.

Behind the camaraderie and ease of the Burrell gathering lies an intense public ambition and largely unspoken private pain.

"We want to be the first blacks to win the Kentucky Derby," says Lewis Sr.

Perhaps not the first. Although the Burrells and most of the racing world don't know it, there was a lack winner, his achievement obscured by a century of racial prejudice. Still, the Burrells may become the first blacks to win the Kentucky Derby by coming in at the top of the game as members of the monied class, the way white owners always have.

Last year, the first year of Oaktown Stable's existence, this street-smart clan stunned the patrician world of thoroughbred racing with a 3-year-old filly that beat horses belonging to some of the most prominent racehorse owners in the world, including corporate raider Carl Icahn and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.

The Burrells, who spent $5 million building a stable of 18 horses, won 16 races out of 57 - including three Grade I stake races, the top races in the country - and earned $1.3 million in purses, an astounding feat in a business where the average earnings per horse is $1,000 per year. They are the first black owners to win a Grade I stakes race in New York, the historic center of thoroughbred racing in the United States.

But even as Oaktown Stable was sweeping honors at the track, fame and fortune were not what patriarch Lewis Sr. was after. He wanted something far more elusive.

"Everyone has something they like to do. I'm a gambling man," says Lewis Sr. as he walks around the Emeryville card club where he has worked for 19 years. The Oaks, the oldest cardroom in California still at its original location, is crowded in the early afternoon in the middle of the week.

Gambling was more than a pastime for Lewis Sr. - it kept the family going. Attracted to the Oaks as a gambler, he got a job there as a dealer and worked his way up to casino manager.

"This club has been good to me," says Lewis Sr., called "Pops" by his sons and their friends. "It's provided me a living so I could raise my kids."

He and his wife separated when Hammer was 5 years old, and later divorced. It was a difficult breakup, but Lewis Sr. remained a strong presence in his children's upbringing. Summers, holidays and Saturdays they spent with Daddy. He often took them to the track, letting the boys try their luck.

The family's gambling instinct is what Lewis Sr. credits for their 1991 wins.

"Part of it is being lucky," he says. "The other part is not being afraid to take chances. We being gamblers we wanted to go where the money was."

He makes it sound easy. Set up a major stable in one year, win a few of the toughest races in the country, beat some of the most serious players in the game. We took some chances, that's all.

Yet many thoroughbred owners who have been in the business for years never achieve the kind of success Oaktown Stable had in 1991. Nor do most get as roughed up breaking into the game as the Burrells did.

"People come into the business and spend millions and millions of dollars and never win a stake," says Noble Threewitt, a trainer from Southern California who has been in the business 60 years."

With the annual cost of training one horse estimated as high as $36,000, the Burrells are competing against deeper pockets than their own. Oaktown could easily spend well over half a million dollars a year, not including extras like veterinary bills, transportation costs and racing fees.

And in their first big purchase, the Burrells got taken.

"They didn't always get treated right in the beginning," says Pat Trotter, marketing director of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association in Lexington, Ky. "They didn't always get the best advice. It's a very speculative industry. There are a lot of sharpies around. Some of it might have been racial and some of it might have been skepticism about just how much money they had."

Lewis Sr. had spotted a promising 3-year-old gelding at Golden Gate Fields. He and Louis Jr. have a weakness for the speed horse, who wins by getting out front at the start and blazing down the track. So they couldn't resist this one, called Media Plan. And once they expressed interest, the price kept going up. Even when one of their negotiators told them the horse was overpriced at $250,000, they wouldn't give up. They bought the horse for $450,000.

But Media Plan never lived up to expectations. After a while, the Burrells decided he never would be more than a sprinter, a fast horse for the shorter races. Nor would he ever be a sire.

"We made a mistake with Media Plan," says Lewis Sr. "We overpaid."

With the Media Plan deal and Oaktown's purchase of several hundred thousand dollars worth of horses in Pomona at the Barretts' 2-year-old sale, one of the premier horse sales of the year, word spread quickly that there were some hot new buyers in the business.

The Burrells had been around the horse business, at least the betting side, for decades. That helped. But their chief strength, say those closest to the family, was Louis Jr.

"Louis Jr. had already dealt with the fastest crowd in the country - the music industry," says Sam Spear, director of media relations for Bay Meadows and a longtime acquaintance of the family. "Louis was well-schooled in dealing with sharpies."

Early last year, Louis Jr. heard about Lite Light, a highly regarded 3-year-old filly. Her price was $1.2 million cash, non-negotiable.

"When I told Louis Lite Light might be available, his head went up like an antenna," says Jerry Hollendorfer, one of two Oaktown Stable trainers and the leading trainer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"I went to see Lite Light at the barn," Louis Jr. says. "Usually I never go to look at the horses. But this horse I looked at."

He got on the phone to Hammer, who was on tour in Australia.

"I said, `This horse seems special. We're going to buy her. We're going to spend $1.2 million.' The phone was silent. Then he said, `What? Have you lost your mind?'

"I said, `This horse is special.' Hammer said, `If that's what you want to do, do it.' "

At the time, Hammer was not part of the stable. His tastes ran more to baseball, football, basketball. But the family wanted to bring him in, and Louis Jr. made a point of letting Hammer know what the stable was doing.

Negotiations started on a Monday, the contract was signed by Wednesday afternoon and Lite Light was paid for by Thursday. Some in the business snickered that the Burrells had been taken again. Lite Light was a good horse, they said, but not a great horse.

Lite Light won her next two races, the $200,000 Santa Anita Oaks and the $250,000 Fantasy Stakes in Hot Springs, Ark.

In May, in one of the most important races for fillies on the East Coast, she beat nine rivals by 10 lengths at Churchill Downs in Louisville, setting an astonishing new stakes record for the Kentucky Oaks. Lite Light ran a faster race than the horses who competed the following day in the Kentucky Derby - and many believed she would have won the Derby if she had run it.

Hammer, watching from afar, now knew Oaktown had a winner. He decided to join the stable. The family - most of all, his father - was delighted. His famous son was back in the fold.

"Hammer did not want to be part of the stable until we won in Kentucky," Lewis Sr., Hammer's father, says. "You see, we had to prove to him that we were serious."

FEELING SNUBBED, BURRELLS TAKE ON EASTERN OLD BOYS

After Kentucky, sportswriters were calling Lite Light the best 3-year-old filly in the country, and a shoo-in for an Eclipse award, the equine equivalent of Best Actress.

To cinch the award, unwritten rules of the game required Lite Light to win the Breeder's Cup Distaff. But the Breeder's Cup races, with a combined purse of $10 million, wasn't until November - a long time away in the life of a racing horse.

The family decided to send Lite Light to Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., in June to challenge the hometown favorite in the Mother Goose race, one leg of the Triple Crown for fillies. They were up against Carl Icahn's Meadow Star, the 3-year-old undisputed female star of the Eastern Seaboard.

At the start of the race, Lite Light's jockey held her back. Then, in the come-from-behind move that signaled her intent to win, Lite Light moved forward powerfully at the turn for home. The track announcer's smoothly predictable call gave way to a high-pitched thrill as Lite Light and Meadow Star dueled ferociously, neck-and-neck, down the stretch. For breathless track fans, the closing seconds brought goose bumps.

Race officials conferred for six long minutes. The winner, by less than 1-16th of an inch: Meadow Star. Lite Light had raced with great heart, displaying a tremendous will to win - but it had not been enough.

Now Oaktown Stable faced its most critical racing decision of the year: whether to confront Meadow Star again or let the loss stand. If Lite Light did not challenge Meadow Star soon, would the sportswriters and racing stewards who vote on the Eclipse awards be left wondering which was the better filly?

Trainer Hollendorfer and other racing insiders counseled against taking Lite Light back to New York. Hollendorfer's instincts told him to hold her back. Otherwise, he feared, she might not make it to the Breeder's Cup in November.

Louis Jr. would not be denied.

"Going back was a bigger than life gesture," Louis Jr. says. "It wasn't a matter of racing. It was for a nation of people. Every black person in America is proud of our stable. When we were in New York I've seen so many black people come up and say, `I'm glad you're racing here.' "

The family took Lite Light back to Belmont in July for the Coaching Club American Oaks for a rematch with Meadow Star in one of the top competitions for fillies.

"That whole event was the strangest thing I've ever seen," Lewis Sr. says. "In the paddock . . . it was like a fight, people hollering and screaming. Some were yelling, go back to California, you don't belong here."

It was a message the family felt it had already received, in much chillier fashion, in the trustees room.

"Try to imagine," said Spear, who accompanied the family on several trips around the country, "We're in this room in New York and it's a special room with all these old-money people. Over here you've got the Whitneys and the Mellons and the Phippses. In comes Oaktown. But it's not like one person, it's an entourage, bodyguards, everything, it's really in your face!"

As Hammer, sporting a a low-slung bright turquoise leather suit, walked into the trustees room, a guard tried to stop him. Before any of Hammer's half-dozen hulking bodyguards could intercede, a young woman in the Oaktown party whacked at the guard's arm and ordered him to let the star through.

The Burrells know that while their money is welcome in the racing industry, to many they are still a black family from the rough streets of Oakland, or "Oaktown" as it is known in street parlance.

"We got those vibes: Who do these people think they are?" says Lewis Sr. "You hear: `Who's that black guy? Who does he think he is?' We are quite aware of it."

Nowhere was the feeling that they were outsiders, and not legitimate members of racing's inner circle, stronger than in New York, Louis Jr. says. Which is why Oaktown had to go back to Belmont to race Meadow Star again.

"We had to go back, not for the money, but to win in New York, New York especially," Louis Jr. says. "The whole premise of our stable is that we no longer represent just ourselves. We have every black person in the entire country looking at us. I had no choice. It was a decision criticized by the rest of racing."

The day of the rematch, attendance was up. Fans were screaming for Hammer, as they did at racetracks around the country.

The Burrells had staked a lot on the rematch. For the rematch, Hammer privately bet $200,000 to Carl Icahn's $150,000. The loser had to contribute to the winner's favorite children's charity.

But the money was nothing compared with the pride the family had risked so publicly. At the time, they felt they had taken on the entire Eastern racing establishment. In fact, they were challenging 100 years of racing history.

It was over in a flash. Lite Light won by seven lengths - and set a new record.

It was a thrilling moment for the Burrells, if only briefly enjoyed.

BURRELS KNOW WHAT THEY WANT NEXT: DERBY WINNER

After beating Meadow Star decisively in July, Lite Light was ranked No. 2 in the weekly Horse of the Year poll, giving her a chance to win an Eclipse not just in her category, 3-year-old fillies, but also the top award. The records she had set established her as the year's fastest filly in North America, and her time was competitive with the best colts as well, according to the calculations of Thoro-graph, a New York firm that tracks every major race.

In September, with all the hoopla that follows an acknowledged star, Lite Light ran in the Chula Vista Handicap at Del Mar. She went flat-out at the start and ended up a distant third against competition considered ordinary.

Three weeks later, in the toughest race of her career, Lite Light was sent to the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs, only the second filly ever to compete in a race traditionally run by colts. But she bled through her lungs, as she had twice before, and finished next to last, 16 1/2 lengths behind the winner.

Lite Light never made it to the Breeder's Cup races in November. Louis Jr. decided because of the bleeding problem to pull her out of racing for the year after her September losses. She was sent to a farm to rest and was shipped back to Golden Gate Fields to begin training for another year just this February.

In the end, despite having a horse widely considered the finest 3-year-old filly in the country, the big honors eluded Oaktown Stable.

The family is philosophical about the way the year ended. "You got to take the bitter with the sweet," says Lewis Sr.

The Burrells have high hopes for a colt named Dance Floor, who has developed into one of the top half-dozen 3-year-olds in the country. Dance Floor won a major Florida stakes race, the Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream Park, in February, but lost the Florida Derby a month later.

The family will race Dance Floor in the Kentucky Derby on May 2. Perhaps taking a cue from last year, they have already lightened their colt's schedule.

The Burrells are ready to repudiate 100 years of racing history on May 2. On Derby Day father and sons will be together again, just like old times, rooting for their favorite horse. They just know that when Dance Floor crosses the finish line the winner, their legacy as a great sporting family will begin.