Remembering Jeff Siegel

Jeff was a colleague and a friend, and it's impossible to fully sum up what he did for my career, but I'll do my best.

To borrow a phrase from The West Wing’s Matthew Santos, horse racing has lost a giant, and I’ve lost a friend.

Jeff Siegel passed away Saturday after a battle with cancer. I could spend a lot of time talking about how good a handicapper he was, and as public handicappers go, he was about as good as it gets. However, this column revolves around one fact: If Jeff hadn’t done a few things for me that he had absolutely zero obligation to do, my career and life both probably turn out much, much differently.

I moved west to California in late-2013 in search of a fresh start. HRTV offered one, and I went to work in their digital media department. This was around the time Jeff Siegel and his on-air partner, Aaron Vercruysse, were actively pitching more in the way of online-only coverage. They saw where media was going before much of the industry did, and after a few months of lobbying, they got the go-ahead to try a few things.

Jeff and I didn’t know each other particularly well, but he took an interest in me. That ultimately led to me producing some of their stuff and hopping on the air when the situation called for it. In a stroke of good fortune, 2014 was the year California Chrome took horse racing by storm and attempted to sweep the Triple Crown at Belmont Park.

Plans were made to do a stream from the Belmont paddock. Jeff could’ve done the stream on his own and gotten a legitimate audience, and everything would’ve worked fine. He insisted on doing it with me.

“Nervous” doesn’t begin to describe my state that day. Jeff, though, gave me every chance to succeed, and we had a really good show. This was the day I ran into Caton Bredar, who was doing hits for HRTV’s on-air coverage, and she asked, with a smile, if I was trying to take someone’s job because I was pretty good.

We did more stuff together after getting back to California, and this was also around the time I started managing HRTV’s social media presence. Jeff’s belief in me got me noticed, allowed me to show I could wear many hats, and while I have no tangible proof of this, I’ve always believed he played a role in helping me get through a very sticky situation in the summer of 2014 where some heavy hitters wanted me fired.

It also made me more valuable when TVG’s parent company acquired HRTV in early-2015. There were legitimate questions about just how many folks would go over to TVG after the acquisition. I’d moved cross-country not long before this and had no idea what my next move would be. In March, though, I got the news I was safe.

If that decision goes the other way, am I still in horse racing? Am I still in the gambling world at all? Furthermore, do I have to move from Los Angeles and jeopardize a romantic relationship that led to a wedding this past summer?

I didn’t have to worry about any of those questions. Jeff told me a few times that people generally make their own luck, but his interest in me gave me chances to show I knew what I was doing. His belief in me helped me believe in myself and make the most of the fresh start I desperately needed.

Most important, though, was this: In an industry with a lot of people who want you to fit in a particular box, he made me feel like I belonged. As a kid trying to make a mark, there’s no better, more comforting feeling than that.

We didn’t work together again after the TVG acquisition. As my career did its best embodiment of the Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere,” Jeff continued to do excellent work for The Stronach Group, even through some trying times. They axed Vercruysse in 2018 as part of highly-publicized layoffs, Santa Anita went through a legitimate PR crisis in 2019, and the early-2020’s saw significant restructuring within the parent company.

Through it all, Jeff was a constant. If you saw or read his work, you knew you were getting top-tier content from one of the sharpest minds in the business. Even with my complicated relationship with The Stronach Group in mind (more on that later this week), I always tried to consume as much of his stuff as I could.

The last time I saw Jeff was during a one-day stop at Golden Gate Fields in 2019. We’d seen each other a few months earlier, at Lou Villasenor’s funeral, but this allowed us a better chance to catch up. The two of us (and the talented, classy Jason Blewitt, who was also part of the proceedings) chatted for the better part of an hour before they went on the air, and it was absolutely wonderful.

Jeff Siegel was a fantastic handicapper. He was, however, an even better human being, and horse racing is worse now that he’s no longer with us.