James Bishop, handicapper beloved at Suffolk Downs
When Suffolk Downs handicapper and racing analyst James Bishop advised patrons to "watch out" for a particular horse in his program comments, the hunch would often pay off.
"The language of the racetrack is very unique, and Bish could speak it with the best of them," said Chip Tuttle, Suffolk Downs chief operating officer. "He was smart, capable, and a wonderful writer, and our fans respected his judgment."
But because of his steadfast resistance to having a publicity photograph taken and his adamant stance against wearing a coat and tie like other media relations employees, Mr. Bishop, according to track announcer T.D. Thornton, moved through the grandstand usually unrecognized by those same fans, despite his reputation as an ace handicapper at the East Boston track.
Mr. Bishop, a lifelong Revere resident who worked at Suffolk Downs from 1978 until February, died Monday at his home after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
"He was a great guy in the truest sense, the real deal. Jimmy would do you a favor and lend you a dollar and believe me, when you're at the track, there's nothing greater than that," said former Globe racing writer Ron Indrisano, a close friend. "He was the essence of the press box at Suffolk. To this day, when I look at racing entries, I wonder what Jimmy would say about a particular horse."
Indrisano said that during three decades covering horse racing's Triple Crown with Ed Gray of The Herald and the late Globe writer Bob Kinsley, "the first thing we'd do early on race day was call Suffolk to catch up with Jimmy. When I retired in 2005, he was the first person I called in Boston to share the news."
His lifelong friend Bob Cataldo said Mr. Bishop was "a private person, but the kind of individual from whom you could learn a lot about life. I respected his humility, honesty, sense of humor, and courage. He never complained to me during his illness, and when I visited him, he'd always be more concerned with how his friends were doing."
Cataldo, who will deliver the eulogy for Mr. Bishop, added that "he always deflected praise, but on Friday, he will most definitely deserve all the tributes."
Cataldo and Mr. Bishop were amateur football teammates for one season with the East Boston Giants of the Boston Park League. "We did everything together, and when I told him I was going to play football, he tried out and we both made the team," Cataldo recalled. "We won the league championship and our 'reward' was playing an exhibition game against the inmates at Concord Reformatory."
Mr. Bishop, a 1971 graduate of Revere High School and 1975 graduate of Boston State College, started working at Suffolk Downs in 1978 in the test barn, where he would help safeguard against medication violations.
"Bish started here from the ground up," said Tuttle, "and became a lifelong racetracker. He was a big guy, well over 6 feet and 200 pounds, but with a very gentle spirit and a unique perspective on life that was rooted in his experience as a handicapper - that you're likely to lose more than you win but that you should enjoy the experience either way."
Mr. Bishop, whose trademark expression was "don't worry 'bout nothing," was an avid supporter of area professional sports teams, the Patriots in particular. He papered the walls of the publicity office with the latest headlines of their triumphs, according to Christian Teja, Suffolk's vice president of marketing and communications.
"Bish did all of the little things that not everyone would notice, and that was his preference," said Teja. "He was happy to let others receive praise for a group effort. On the rare occasions when he wasn't in the office, that's when you really noticed just how valuable he was."
Not all of Mr. Bishop's program picks however, were based on scientific calculation. One time, according to Thornton, he successfully selected a 50-1 shot, Wanton Discovery, picking the horse as the third choice in a trifecta because "we ordered out Chinese food the other night when I was making the picks."
Thornton, Suffolk's former public relations director, said that when Mr. Bishop spoke, "whatever came out of his mouth was either hilarious, profound, or both. For anyone fortunate enough to work with him, Bish's off-the-cuff verbal insights about the wacky world of the racetrack were reason enough to come to the races each day."
Thornton, whose book, "Not by a Long Shot," includes personal reminiscences of Mr. Bishop, said his colleague had a following of regulars who would phone the press box every day, many of them racing fans who lived in veterans' or nursing homes.
"Although they sought racing information, Bish knew what they really needed," said Thornton. "Someone to talk to, a bit of his time and respect, and a reason to keep looking ahead to the next day of racing."
Mr. Bishop's early duties at Suffolk included setting the morning line odds for the racing program and news outlets and serving as a chart-caller on the roof (at Suffolk and also at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire). From that vantage point, he would monitor the position of the horses at intervals through binoculars and provide the data to Equibase, the company whose statistics appear for all horses in the Daily Racing Form.
"Chart-calling was kind of a lost art," said Tuttle, "and Bish was great at it."
Mr. Bishop leaves his mother, Flora (MacDonald) of Peabody, and several aunts, uncles, and cousins.
A funeral Mass will be said today at 10:30 a.m. in Immaculate Conception Church in Revere. Burial will be in Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett. 