MONDAY MOANIN:
A YOOPER PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
Jeff Seidel: Mystery Yooper Perry Martin and his horse of destiny, Calfornia Chrome
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California Chrome owners Steven Coburn, right, and Perry Martin hold the trophy after Victor Espinoza rode California Chrome to victory in the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs Saturday, May 3, 2014, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/David Goldman) / David Goldman/ AP
By Jeff Seidel
Detroit Free Press Columnist
The phone rang and a man answered.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m trying to reach Perry Martin.”
Martin is the quiet, media-avoiding, transplanted Yooper, who graduated from Michigan Tech and co-owns California Chrome, a horse that will race in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, bidding to become only the 12th horse to win the Triple Crown.
His mother, Catherine Martin, 83, still lives in Iron Mountain. And the ashes of his father, Charlie Martin, were spread across a deer camp in the Upper Peninsula.
And now, Perry Martin has a chance to make history with California Chrome. The last Triple Crown winner was Affirmed in 1978.
Horse owners are usually gazillionaires, who are insulated by layers of public relations officials. And the publicity around California Chrome has been enormous. I figured it would take several days to set up an interview because Martin has avoided the limelight. He’s the guy who refused to go to the Belmont Stakes because he was upset about the way he was treated at the Kentucky Derby, or, well, that’s the story that has been repeated endlessly in news reports.
So I didn’t figure that I would be able to reach him.
“This is Perry,” the man on the telephone said.
I was stunned.
This guy answered his own company’s phone? A general number in California that I found on a Google search?
Perry Martin truly is a normal, everyday, blue-collar guy. As a kid, Martin would tromp around the woods in the U.P., hunting snowshoe rabbits and shooting partridge. During the summer, he fished in creeks around Iron Mountain with his brother, Roy, and they blew up ant hills with M-80s. Martin was born in Chicago, but he loved the U.P. so much that he went to Michigan Tech, where he graduated in 1978 after majoring in applied physics. Then, he moved to California and eventually got into horse racing.
“What would the Triple Crown mean to you?” I asked.
He let out a sigh.
“I’ve actually been thinking about that,” he said. “And I haven’t gotten an answer yet. Obviously, it will increase the value of the horse. Economically, our lives would be much improved. But I’m already proud of the horse. No matter what happens, I’m gonna be proud of the horse. He’s done a great job. I’m proud of our whole team for the effort they have put in.”
We talked for almost a half-hour, and he kept surprising me.
Perry Martin might live in California now, but he still has a Midwestern sensibility, an honest, direct, hard-working attitude that he learned from his father, who died in 2006 after working in his yard in Iron Mountain.
“Basically, the most important thing that I learned from my dad would be my moral compass, my work ethic,” Perry Martin said. “He lived through example mostly. I took it to heart. To treat people like you would like to be treated. If somebody doesn’t treat you that way, correct them as quickly as you can, whether it’s a left hook or whatever is appropriate.”
And then, he let out a big laugh.
Martin and his partner, Steve Coburn, bought Love the Chase for $8,000. Somebody told them it was a “dumb-ass” move because Love the Chase was small and slow, nothing but a loveable loser.
So they named their partnership Dumb Ass Partners. This is a cute, heart-warming story — repeated constantly in the media — and it has fueled a perception that these two have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
Which is not exactly true.
“What did you see in Love the Chase?” I asked.
“I loved her pedigree,” Martin said.
He read several books on breeding thoroughbreds, paying particular attention to techniques devised by Edward Stanley, the 17th Earl of Derby, a prominent breeder in the first half of the 20th Century.
“He was a pretty phenomenal breeder,” Martin said. “One of his favorite breeding patterns was to breed close in on significant breeding lines for certain traits, like speed and stamina, and then to outcross, to correct any deficiencies that would develop.”
Martin studied Love the Chase’s pedigree and recognized some of the breeding patterns used by Stanley.
“I was intrigued by it,” Martin said. “She didn’t really have the size that you would want and her racing career didn’t produce the performance that you would like to see. But performance is influenced by human factors a lot of times, or by factors that aren’t controlled by the breeding. As it turned out, that happened with her.”
“Do many people breed this way?” I asked.
“I can’t speak for many people,” Martin said. “There is a lot of crowd effect in breeding. Going with the crowd is not always the best way to go all the time.”
Now, remember. Martin is a scientist and takes a scientific approach to everything. He is also an author. He wrote a 520-page book entitled: “Electronic Failure Analysis Handbook: Techniques and Applications for Electronic and Electrical Packages, Components, and Assemblies,” which was published in 1999 by McGraw-Hill.
Granted, the plot is said to be a little slow but this is no dumb-ass anybody.
Perry Martin owns Martin Testing Laboratories, a company in McClellan Park, Calif., near Sacramento. He has six full-time employees and about 24 on call, retired scientists who like to work once in a while.
“What do you test?” I asked.
“We test whatever anybody will pay us to test,” he said.
They test satellites that cost $250 million to launch, or airbags, or avionics for airplanes, or military equipment used on the battlefield. It’s the kind of stuff, as he said, that “if it fails, somebody is going to die.”
“Hello,” I said. “I’m trying to reach Perry Martin.”
Martin is the quiet, media-avoiding, transplanted Yooper, who graduated from Michigan Tech and co-owns California Chrome, a horse that will race in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, bidding to become only the 12th horse to win the Triple Crown.
His mother, Catherine Martin, 83, still lives in Iron Mountain. And the ashes of his father, Charlie Martin, were spread across a deer camp in the Upper Peninsula.
And now, Perry Martin has a chance to make history with California Chrome. The last Triple Crown winner was Affirmed in 1978.
Horse owners are usually gazillionaires, who are insulated by layers of public relations officials. And the publicity around California Chrome has been enormous. I figured it would take several days to set up an interview because Martin has avoided the limelight. He’s the guy who refused to go to the Belmont Stakes because he was upset about the way he was treated at the Kentucky Derby, or, well, that’s the story that has been repeated endlessly in news reports.
So I didn’t figure that I would be able to reach him.
“This is Perry,” the man on the telephone said.
I was stunned.
This guy answered his own company’s phone? A general number in California that I found on a Google search?
Perry Martin truly is a normal, everyday, blue-collar guy. As a kid, Martin would tromp around the woods in the U.P., hunting snowshoe rabbits and shooting partridge. During the summer, he fished in creeks around Iron Mountain with his brother, Roy, and they blew up ant hills with M-80s. Martin was born in Chicago, but he loved the U.P. so much that he went to Michigan Tech, where he graduated in 1978 after majoring in applied physics. Then, he moved to California and eventually got into horse racing.
“What would the Triple Crown mean to you?” I asked.
He let out a sigh.
“I’ve actually been thinking about that,” he said. “And I haven’t gotten an answer yet. Obviously, it will increase the value of the horse. Economically, our lives would be much improved. But I’m already proud of the horse. No matter what happens, I’m gonna be proud of the horse. He’s done a great job. I’m proud of our whole team for the effort they have put in.”
We talked for almost a half-hour, and he kept surprising me.
Perry Martin might live in California now, but he still has a Midwestern sensibility, an honest, direct, hard-working attitude that he learned from his father, who died in 2006 after working in his yard in Iron Mountain.
“Basically, the most important thing that I learned from my dad would be my moral compass, my work ethic,” Perry Martin said. “He lived through example mostly. I took it to heart. To treat people like you would like to be treated. If somebody doesn’t treat you that way, correct them as quickly as you can, whether it’s a left hook or whatever is appropriate.”
And then, he let out a big laugh.
All in the bloodline
Now, we have to back up a little because this story starts with a filly named Love the Chase.Martin and his partner, Steve Coburn, bought Love the Chase for $8,000. Somebody told them it was a “dumb-ass” move because Love the Chase was small and slow, nothing but a loveable loser.
So they named their partnership Dumb Ass Partners. This is a cute, heart-warming story — repeated constantly in the media — and it has fueled a perception that these two have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
Which is not exactly true.
“What did you see in Love the Chase?” I asked.
“I loved her pedigree,” Martin said.
He read several books on breeding thoroughbreds, paying particular attention to techniques devised by Edward Stanley, the 17th Earl of Derby, a prominent breeder in the first half of the 20th Century.
“He was a pretty phenomenal breeder,” Martin said. “One of his favorite breeding patterns was to breed close in on significant breeding lines for certain traits, like speed and stamina, and then to outcross, to correct any deficiencies that would develop.”
Martin studied Love the Chase’s pedigree and recognized some of the breeding patterns used by Stanley.
“I was intrigued by it,” Martin said. “She didn’t really have the size that you would want and her racing career didn’t produce the performance that you would like to see. But performance is influenced by human factors a lot of times, or by factors that aren’t controlled by the breeding. As it turned out, that happened with her.”
“Do many people breed this way?” I asked.
“I can’t speak for many people,” Martin said. “There is a lot of crowd effect in breeding. Going with the crowd is not always the best way to go all the time.”
Now, remember. Martin is a scientist and takes a scientific approach to everything. He is also an author. He wrote a 520-page book entitled: “Electronic Failure Analysis Handbook: Techniques and Applications for Electronic and Electrical Packages, Components, and Assemblies,” which was published in 1999 by McGraw-Hill.
Granted, the plot is said to be a little slow but this is no dumb-ass anybody.
Perry Martin owns Martin Testing Laboratories, a company in McClellan Park, Calif., near Sacramento. He has six full-time employees and about 24 on call, retired scientists who like to work once in a while.
“What do you test?” I asked.
“We test whatever anybody will pay us to test,” he said.
They test satellites that cost $250 million to launch, or airbags, or avionics for airplanes, or military equipment used on the battlefield. It’s the kind of stuff, as he said, that “if it fails, somebody is going to die.”
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