Shirreffs and 'Short Man' Shared a Lifetime in Racing

John Flakes was talking about his friend John Shirreffs. It wasn't easy, but it had to be done. "It's bringing tears to my eyes," said Flakes, better known around the racetrack as "Short Man." "We lost a good man. It's not like I'm crying or anything. But you know like when you get those emotional tears, and your eyes get hot?" Yeah, Short Man, just about everybody who knew John Shirreffs knows what you mean. Shirreffs was 80, healthy and happy and training a full barn, traveling with client Lee Searing to inspect their young horses in Florida and looking forward to the season ahead. Then he got sick and died, on Feb. 12, news that splashed like a boulder in the common pond of Thoroughbred racing and sent ripples to the farthest corners of the game. A corner like Swansea, Ill., just south of Fairmount Park, where Flakes retired a few years back after some six decades working for trainers like Buster Millerick, Charlie Whittingham, Bobby Wingfield, David Whiteley, Mike Harrington, Lefty Nickerson, and Kristin Mulhall. "I worked two different times for John," Flakes said. "We were about the same age. I'll be 83 in August. I've known John since about 1970, when he was right out of the service, working at a farm up in Northern California. "I was working for Buster Millerick, and we sent them a horse named Kissin' George," Flakes said. "A good horse, but was getting up there. John had him out in the creek, water running on his knees every day, and we brought him back." Flakes was among the last of the distinguished Black grooms, riders, and assistants that made the Southern California backstretch hum with righteous vibes. In addition to Flakes, the names of Huey Barnes, Eugene McDaniels, Joe Merriweather, Charles Clay, Bill Albritton, Rudy Roberts, Ed Lambert and his nephew, George, are familiar to anyone who has spent any time around the best barns. Flakes was an Arkansas kid by way of Southern Illinois, where he grew up in the town of Centreville, a suburb of East St. Louis, and walked hots at nearby Fairmount Park for 50 cents a head when he was 12 years old. "I guess I'm back where I started," Flakes said. "Thank goodness, times have changed. Back at Fairmount, we had white and colored water fountains. The kitchen had a partition—whites ate on one side, colored on the other. Finally they'd stopped that, but some people still thought that way. John was never one of those guys. For him, everybody earned their way." Flakes spent most of his working life in the stalls, caring for Thoroughbreds from the ground up. He found in Shirreffs a kindred spirit, driven by a philosophy that gave every horse a chance. Some of them were destined to be maiden claimers; others became Zenyatta, Giacomo, and Manistique. "John connected with horses because he liked them," Flakes said. "He could feel inside them. A horse's first instinct is flight. After that, anything goes. Once he takes off in flight, it seems like he's got tunnel vision almost. It's one thing to recognize that, but John understood, and those are two different things. "Not only would he try different things, he had patience," Flakes continued. "Most horses understand patience. You take the time with them, they understand. "We had a colt by Tiznow. Man, that horse would do things. John had Frank walk him around the training track in the morning after it closed, spending hours driving him using long reins, finally getting him to the races. It was a miracle, John and horses." Frank is Frank Leal, one of a host of long-serving Shirreffs crew members that included Mario Espinoza, Zenyatta's groom. "When you talk to guys like Mario and Frank, notice how quiet they talk," Flakes said. "It's just like talking to John. Most of the guys that worked for John took on his demeanor. I always wanted to be like John—calm, cool, and collected. Was a time I could go off the deep end, but once I got around John I controlled myself." Flakes counts himself lucky to have served a couple of tours with Shirreffs. Visitors would hear the head man often call upon Flakes to apply lessons from his many years at the track. "Oh yeah," Flakes said. "Somebody'd come to him with something, and I'd hear him say, 'Find Short Man. He can do it.' "When Zenyatta first came into the barn, nobody wanted that big, ugly horse," Flakes said, adding a chuckle at the thought. "And Mario wound up with her. That was funny. But how many people do you know would have kept Zenyatta going as long as John did? She wouldn't have lasted more than a couple years anywhere else. "We had four or five colts that John would use to work with her--colts who would have been running in stakes races in any other barn," Flakes said. "We even had a little filly at the time almost as good as Zenyatta, named Zardana. She went down to Louisiana and beat Rachel Alexandra." It's no stretch to suggest that Shirreffs kept a guy like Flakes around for selfish reasons, beyond Short Man's all-around set of skills. Shirreffs called Flakes "the Music Man" for the sweet sounds he would bring to the barn. "John loved my stories, and he'd tell me stories," Flakes said. "We loved to sit around and chat. He didn't talk much about his time with the Marines. But I did tell him how if it wasn't for the service I never would have been around the racetrack. I tried to join the Army, but they wouldn't take me because I had a heart murmur. So I headed to the track. "The last time I talked to him, a few months back, he said he had a good colt, named Westwood," Flakes said. "The way John was talking, he thought that horse had a real good future." Westwood, owned by Lee and Susan Searing, turned out to be the one of the last two horses Shirreffs sent to the races. It took 10 starts, but the 4-year-old son of Authentic finally broke through with a victory in the San Pasqual Stakes (G2) at Santa Anita Park Jan. 31. "There it is," Flakes said. "If you write about John, you talk about how patient he was with his horses. You also need to say how going into his barn was like being with a family, and we were all brothers. He was a good man."