Yearlings

Officials of the two auctioneering firms that will sell nearly 400 thoroughbred yearlings in Maryland during the next week hope that the strong market response at the recently concluded nine-day Keeneland, Ky., sale will carry over here.The Kentucky auction, the strongest fall yearling sale in its DTC 50-year history, grossed more than $87 million for nearly 2,500 horses, a 24 percent increase from a year ago."I'm guardedly optimistic," said Mason Grasty, executive vice president of Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Inc., the firm that will sell the bulk of the state's yearling sales crop on Oct. 3 and 4 at the Timonium Fairgrounds.

Word filters around the horse sales pavilion at the Timonium fairgrounds about as quickly as it takes Fighting Notion to run six furlongs at Laurel Race Course.Pretty fast."Did you see Hip No. 72? He's the reincarnation of his sire, Rollicking," said a bloodstock agent."Who's the best-looking horse in the sale? The Thirty Eight Paces colt out Classy And Quick," said a well-known trainer who shows champion conformation horses."Thank goodness Brian Mayberry [a California trainer] is here. There'd be no one to buy our horses if he didn't show up," said a leading seller.

Vendors on the corner of York and Timonium roads will be hustling their wares this weekend.But it isn't a crafts or an RV show.About 170 buyers, mostly from the East Coast, are expected to show up and shell out nearly $2 million for about 325 thoroughbred yearlings.It's a high-stakes poker game that takes place locally every fall at the horse sales arena at the Timonium fairgrounds.Despite the current recession affecting nearly all aspects of racing, Mason Grasty, executive vice president of Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Inc., which conducts the auction in two sessions tomorrow and Monday, is optimistic that prices will match its 20-percent increase last year.

"Give me a month at home in Pleasanton and I'll need a media fix," Shelley Riley said when she left New York after her horse, Casual Lies, finished fifth in the Belmont Stakes.For five weeks during the Triple Crown campaign, Riley, with her glib tongue, and her husband, Jim, entertained the racing press with the exploits of their one-horse stable.Now Riley is home in California, nursing her Triple Crown runner back to health at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.Riley and her husband are the consummate small-time owners-trainers who became celebrities after Casual Lies finished second in the Kentucky Derby and third in the Preakness.

Karen Hay struck out seven, allowed just five hits, walked one, hit another batter and threw three wild pitches in seven innings' work in the opener of the Amateur Softball Association Junior Olympic Fastpitch tournament.Her counterpart, Jen Holsinger, walked seven, struck out five and yielded three wild pitches in seven innings last night at Columbia's Cedar Lane Park.Guess who got the win?Hay's Tangerine Machine, one of three Anne Arundel-based teams competing in the 18-and-under tournament, made mistakes at the worst possible moments, allowing Holsinger's Columbus (Ohio)

LAUREL -- Peter Pugh pulls on his red baseball cap with the blue lettering that spells "Calumet Farm," and hops into his pickup truck."You wanna know what really makes me mad? People that dump this farm," the 39-year-old trainer said."I hear it all the time -- 'hey, have you got paid yet?' -- stuff like that. They would be so lucky to have even one son of Alydar standing in their shedrow."The litany goes on, ever since the world-renowned farm, the farm that is synonymous in this country with horse racing and Kentucky bluegrass, filed for bankruptcy on July 11.A week earlier Pugh shipped into Laurel with the bulk of what is left of the Calumet Farm racing string -- 10 horses, including two sons of Alydar, named Joy Maker and Aly Fresco; Beautiful Gold, a daughter of champion sire Mr. Prospector out of Calumet's champion filly, Before Dawn, and seven other royally-bred, though heavily leveraged, horses.

Racing officials reported yesterday that prices were down nearly 11 percent in the final tally of the prestigious July sale of selected yearlings at Keeneland race course in Lexington, Ky.But they expressed relief that there had been no worse decline in a market that had already plunged 40 percent in the preceding five years.They also acknowledged again that the market was still being saved by heavy spending by investors from the Arab nations and Japan, who once more dominated the two days of auction sales that closed Tuesday night.