He came by it honestly. His roots were Baltimore. So were his genes:
His grandfather, John Mayberry, trained the 1903 Kentucky Derby winner Judge Himes. His father, also named Chick, won the 1928 Derby as the jockey aboard Reigh Count. And, Chick Lang , well, he went straight from Forest Park High School into the business and sport for which he was bred.
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This was a guy who did every job you could do at Pimlico Race Course except ride a horse. He mucked stalls, he was a hot walker, he was a trainer, he was a jockey agent and, finally, the Cohen Brothers, who then owned the race track, looked around and said, “Hell, you might as well take her. She’s always been yours.”
And so, in 1969, Chick Lang became the general manager.
The track had tradition. The track had a special place in Baltimore lore. And the track had a semi-tarnished jewel called the Preakness. All it lacked was the right guy to turn the middle race in the Triple Crown from a zircon into a diamond.
And now it had a general manager who did not see it as a challenge. He saw it as a crusade. He was P.T. Barnum with a dream, the man who took the Preakness out of the Kentucky Derby’s ubiquitous shadow and brought it into the springtime sunshine of a brand-new day.
And Chick Lang went out and did it.
They called him Mr. Preakness and they knew him in every corner of this city he loved ... from the old-money elite to the $2 daily racetrack communicants ... from the grooms and jocks and owners and trainers to every high school kid who ever hid the morning line in his algebra book ... from the Orioles’ dugout to the Ravens’ bench to the brass section of the Baltimore Colts marching band.
The former general manager of Pimlico was a one-man crusader in the war to bring his track and his race the dignity it deserved as an oft-forgotten middle jewel of the Triple Crown.
’'He did everything at this track,’' Nancy Lang, his wife for 63 years, once said, “except ride horses. Chick always said he loved racing more than he loved me, and that was OK. I understood.”
Against that body of evidence, the track had no choice but to surrender to the inevitable. ’'Take her,’' he was told in 1969, ’'she’s been yours all along anyway.’'
And so the track and the Preakness and, some say, the whole damned town became his.
What he did with it was a masterpiece of promotion. For him, there was no track but Pimlico and the Preakness was its Hope Diamond.
The twin notions launched this little David into the guerrilla warfare that was the track’s changed relationship with the Goliath they call the Kentucky Derby.
The Derby, of course, was, well, the Derby. But Lang took his marathon promotion right to its doorstep.
’'One year,’' said the late Joe Kelly, who was keeper of all things historical concerning the Preakness, ’'he bought this huge slide projector and took it with him to the Derby. He rented a hotel room opposite a blank wall. Between his room and that wall was the route of the Pegasus Parade that promotes the Derby.
’'Just when the parade reached it high point, he clicked on the projector and made a huge billboard on the wall reading:
’'Next Stop, Preakness.’'
’'Then he hired 100 kids to drop these folded fake $10 bills on the sidewalks around town. People raced to scoop them up but they discovered the other half of the fold read ’'Next Stop Preakness.’'
Clearly, he sent more than a few self-anointed Kentucky colonels racing toward the nearest bourbon bottle.
Under his administration the Preakness went from the orphan of the Triple Crown to parity. From a gate of 30,000 customers, Chick boosted it to six figures.
Lou Rafetto, was his protégé and followed him in the general manager job:
’'But he never really retired. ... He truly was Mr. Preakness. He spent more time in my office on Preakness week than I did.
’'Nancy would call me with a heads up every day saying ‘He’s on his way.’ He’d get there and it was ‘Did you do this?’ and ‘Did you do that?’ and he’d go on and on about some little thing and I’d say, ‘Who cares?’
’'And then he’d go crazy and thunder back at me ‘I care’ and then he’d make me care. In 1976 we made a big deal out of America’s Bicentennial celebration, he wore red, white and blue pants and a matching sports coat with stars all over it.
’'He had the Budweiser wagon with the Clydesdales here and the wagon broke down. So there’s Nancy looking through her binoculars at the guys trying to move the wagon because the horses are about to come on for the next race.
’'And then she goes crazy because Chick is in the middle of the track crew pushing and lifting.
’'Chick was the last non-corporate racing executive to care about the customers, the horsemen, the trainers and the grooms. Hey, it’s possible that you can’t find five others today in any sport like him.’'
He died 11 years ago at age 83. A month later, a lone jockey named Ryan Fogelsonger, wearing the Preakness colors of black and gold, made a solitary gallop around the track on a white horse. It was opening day at Pimlico and he was carrying Chick Lang’s ashes.
They would be spread across the Preakness winner’s circle by Lang’s wife, Nancy, while the crowd stood at solitary parade rest.
And there is still more story that must be told here for the benefit of the current college generation of college kids, as well as the future party-conscious unborn.
In 1971, he won the battle that took the Preakness out of the role of the forgotten jewel in the Triple Crown and made it the greatest single sporting event in all of Maryland.
He had argued for years with the track’s owners, Ben and Herman Cohen, that opening the infield on Preakness Day to fans would give the track a new dimension. He needed a tunnel to do it. Their argument against it was money.
Finally, Lang told the brothers that if the tunnel didn’t pay for itself, he would.
That night, Nancy asked him, ’'Where in the world are we going to get that kind of money?”
“No problem,’' Chick said. “I’ll borrow it from the Cohens.’'
Jerry Izenberg is Columnist Emeritus for The Star-Ledger. He can be reached at jizenberg@starledger.com.