Earlie Fires

As a competitive rider for five decades, Fires is one of only a handful of riders to have won more than 6,000 races. The leading apprentice rider in 1965, Fires has waited for years to take his place in the hall. Fires, one of only 14 North American reinsmen to win more than 6,000 races (6,161 through July 23), is in the 36th renewal of a season concentrated in the Midwest for most of the year, Florida for the rest. Raised on his parents' farm near Rivervale, Ark., some 40 miles from Memphis, Earlie was one of 11 children; most of the nine boys in that contingent wound up working in horse racing in some capacity. Because of his diminutive size, his siblings called him "Little Brother." Once he hit the racetrack that was truncated to "Brother," the nickname by which he is known to this day. Earlie's first career victory came aboard Carnation Kid at Oaklawn Park on March 6, 1965. It was one of 224 tallies he would compile that year, enough to make him the nation's leading apprentice. That summer, Proctor and Blair decided to send their prized prospect to old Miles Park in Louisville, Ky., where they thought more mounts would be available to him. Blair remained in Chicago with his other client, the accomplished journeyman Kenny Knapp. It was an astute move. With agent Eddie Campbell booking his mounts, Fires won 90 races to destroy the previous one-meeting Miles Park record by 28. (In 1976, Campbell returned the favor by sending another apprentice sensation to Chicago for Blair to work with--Hall of Famer Steve Cauthen.) Fires' great start proved to be no fluke. He won his first $100,000 race in 1966 (on First Family in the Gulfstream Park Handicap) and continued to pile up the winners with metronomic regularity. He won his 3,000th race in 1982, his 4,000th in 1986, his 5,000th in 1990, and his 6,000th in 1998. On two occasions he rode seven winners on one program at Arlington Park (Aug. 16, 1983, and May 25, 1987), and he was a perfect six-for-six at Hawthorne on the glorious afternoon of June 19, 1989. In the course of notching five riding titles at Arlington (he is that track's all-time leader with 2,660 wins), five at Keeneland, four at Churchill Downs, three at Hawthorne and "singles" at Gulfstream, Hialeah, and Calder, Fires piloted a plethora of top stakes horses including In Reality, Abe's Hope, War Censor, Foolish Pleasure, Swinging Mood, Pattee Canyon, Classy Cathy, Tumble Wind, and One Dreamer. Fires said that his winning the George Woolf Award "as voted by my fellow jockeys" in 1991 was a huge thrill. His major career disappointment, on the other hand, was "never winning a Kentucky Derby. It's every rider's dream. But," said the man from Arkansas, "getting into the Hall of Fame means more to me than I can say. This tops everything."