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Arcaro owns a home in the suburbs. It is a nine-room stone-&-stucco house on a dead-end street in Rockville Centre, L.I. —safe for his two kids, Carolyn, 6,†and Bobby, 4. Arcaro, who has been living soft since he quit as contract jockey for the Greentree Stable 1½ years ago, sleeps until 9 a.m. He used to get up at 6 a.m., like most jockeys. Now a free lancer, he eats a leisurely breakfast, and at 11:30 a.m. hops into his Cadillac and drives to work.
At the track, he checks to see what mounts he has. Like every jockey, he has an agent to make his riding engagements. Arcaro's agent, Melvin ("Bones") La Boyne, has an easier time of it than most. Because it costs no more to hire the best jockey (a flat-rate $50 for a winning mount on big tracks,** $25 for a loser), trainers seek out Bones.
Agent La Boyne's office hours are from 8 a.m. until the last race is run, and he can usually take his pick of mounts. Because favorites obviously have a better chance of winning than long shots, Bones seldom books Arcaro to ride any 15-to-1 horses. Many bettors put their money on whatever horse Arcaro is riding, thus shortening the odds further still; his reputation helps make a lot of false favorites. Arcaro is an unsound betting proposition. Eddie himself used to bet on his horses, says he gave it up because "I don't think you can beat them things." His income is about $2,300 a week, minus $340 for valet and agent fees. (Says Eddie: "After taxes, it's just a livin'.")
After work, Arcaro goes home and sinks into a big easy chair, grabs the evening paper and turns to the racing page. He is unmistakably boss at home. His wife is two inches taller than he is, but Arcaro likes her to wear extra high heels because he says it makes a woman's legs look prettier. For a while, he was red-hot on airplanes, bought one, and learned to fly it. But he got over it, just as he also cooled off on previous enthusiasms for bridge, tennis and backyard barbecues. The only sports he has never tired of are fishing, golf (he plays in the low 80s) and horses.
The Year George Smith Won. Almost since the day he was born—the year a horse named George Smith won the Derby —Eddie Arcaro has been making his way against odds, which have shortened considerably through the years. First, it was his size. At Southgate, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati, the other kids told him that he was too small to play baseball. At ten, as a caddy at the Highland Country Club, he took such a shine to the game that his father, Patsy Arcaro, the comfortably fixed proprietor of a china store, thought he had a golfer in the family. One of Eddie's best clients was Tom McCaffery, a crotchety race horse owner.
One day when Eddie was twelve, the principal of his school asked his mother whether Eddie was feeling better. Said his mother: "I didn't know he wasn't feeling well." Eddie had been playing hooky for 43 days, using his lunch money for carfare out to Latonia, to fool around the horses. His father read him the riot act and sent him back to school. Six months later his parents caught him driving back from the race track again in the family Packard.