A million thanks to Jim McKay
“ Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”—Henry David Thoreau.

“Jim McKay died.” Hearing the words wasn’t quite the same as finding out, in the middle of a high school Latin class, that President Kennedy had been shot. Still, like many people, I won’t easily forget the split-second I heard the news—on a tour bus inching through gridlocked traffic in Brooklyn, N.Y., on the way to the Belmont Stakes.

Mr. McKay, who died at the age of 86, does not have an obituary in this issue of Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, because he failed to meet our deadline. But we’ll be paying tribute to the man whose real name was James McManus in next month’s magazine, and again in the September Maryland Million Guide.

He was that important to the breeding and racing industry in the Mid-Atlantic region, especially Maryland.

It all began, as Mr. McKay all too often reminisced, when he and his beloved wife, Margaret, were on an airplane returning from the inaugural running of the Breeders’ Cup in 1984.
“ Wouldn’t it be great to have a scaled-down version of this in Maryland?” said Mr. McManus to Mrs. McManus, or words to that effect.

Two years later, horses stepped out onto the track at Laurel Park for the first edition of Maryland Million Day. But getting there wasn’t as simple as it might seem in retrospect. There were people (lots of them) who doubted the idea would work.

Still at the height of his legendary career as an ABC sportscaster, Mr. McKay applied his charm and charisma and made it work.

Thanks to his vision, Maryland became home to one of the most successful Thoroughbred racing initiatives in the country, if not the world.

At least 20 other states have modeled programs after the Maryland Million. And while Maryland racing has fallen on tough times, the Maryland Million continues to prosper and grow.

In the spring of 1985, the McManuses were in the process of restoring and remodeling the beautiful old house on their Bellefield Farm in Monkton, Md., their primary residence in the years since then.

Five years earlier, they had begun developing a small Thoroughbred breeding and racing operation that, to borrow one of Mr. McKay’s favorite sportscasting phrases, brought them personal experience with the “thrill of victory and agony of defeat,” although it provided more of the latter than the former.

Probably Mr. McKay was the most famous person I’ve ever interviewed. But it didn’t feel that way when I sat down in the McManuses’ living room that afternoon 23 years ago, to gather information for an article in the old Maryland Horse magazine.

“ If we’re not home when you get there, come in the kitchen door and make yourself at home,” Mr. McKay had told me. I waited in the driveway, and it was only a few minutes before a black limousine paused ever so discreetly on the road in front of the house.
He talked about his horses in great detail—just as you’d expect. Later, when I went to verify the information (names and dates, and finish positions in various races, are rarely exactly as anyone recalls them), it was all correct. Just as he had called it. He was, after all, the real McKay.